Great North Road Read online

  ‘Early days, Detective,’ the coroner said. He turned the left leg and indicated a three-centimetre graze. ‘Again, post mortem, the wound is deeper at the top, indicating a snag of some kind punctured the skin and tore.’ Another sensor was applied, along with a micro-camera which threw up a hugely magnified image on one of the screens. ‘No residuals, I’m afraid. The river took care of that.’

  The body was turned over, and the exam continued. Sid did his best not to flinch as one of the assistants took a swab sample from the body’s anus. What that must be like for Aldred he couldn’t imagine.

  The coroner held up one of the hands, then the other, scanning the arms. ‘There are small extraction marks everywhere. The smartcells were removed post mortem.’

  ‘Roughly how long would that take?’ Sid asked.

  ‘I’ll catalogue the exact number later, but if you’re doing it properly, it takes about thirty seconds for each one. Most people have between ten and fifty depending on what level of transnet access you want, and how much of your health you like to monitor. They’re actually quite easy to remove, since commercially available smartcells measure less than half a millimetre, except for the iris ones of course, they’re a lot smaller. Obviously you have to locate them first, though. Judging by the mess they made of his eyeballs, I’d say they weren’t too concerned about precision.’

  ‘Each North family member has stealth smartcells,’ Dr Fransun said. ‘They won’t activate and link without a code. They’re embedded in case of abduction.’

  Sid gave Aldred a sharp glance. ‘And?’

  ‘No response. I tried the general code as soon as we came in. Nothing.’

  ‘So either he’s not a true North, or they extracted the stealth smartcells as well.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But if they’re not active, how would they do that?’

  ‘A sophisticated scan, or they tortured the codes out of him.’

  ‘There’s no sign of that,’ the coroner said; he indicated the corpse’s hands. ‘There aren’t even any defensive wounds. Whatever happened to him, it was quick.’ He lifted the right hand to indicate the missing fingertip skin. ‘Again, the skin was sliced off post mortem.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to stay for this part?’ Sid asked once the body was rolled onto its back again.

  ‘Sure,’ Aldred grunted.

  The big C-shaped body sensor descended on two arms, and slowly moved the length of the corpse. They all watched the 3D image build up on a wallscreen. Sections were amplified on surrounding screens.

  ‘No foreign matter visible,’ the coroner said.

  Dr Fransun walked over to the wall of screens, peering at one. ‘That’s unusual.’

  The coroner joined him, the two of them peering at a blue and white image that seemed to show translucent sheets folded round each other in some complex origami. ‘I see what you mean,’ the coroner agreed.

  ‘What’s up?’ Sid asked.

  ‘There seems to be a lot of damage inside the chest cavity. That doesn’t quite correspond to the surface wound.’

  They returned to the corpse and swung a micro-camera across the wound. High-resolution images of the five puncture wounds were recorded, their dimensions measured exactly. Four of them were close together, in a slight curve, while the fifth, lower, puncture was a couple of centimetres from the rest.

  ‘Each one is a slightly different size,’ the coroner said. ‘I thought it was one blade used repeatedly. Interesting, the weapon has five separate blades. That would be extremely difficult to use.’

  ‘How so?’ Aldred asked.

  ‘To penetrate skin and bone – which is what’s happened here – is hard enough for a single sharp blade. Human muscle can do it, obviously, but a considerable force has to be exerted. The body provides significant resistance. Here, the assailant had to exert enough force for five blades to penetrate simultaneously. Most difficult.’

  ‘Big man, then,’ Sid said. He was staring at the wound pattern – something bothered him.

  ‘Or frenzied,’ the coroner said. ‘But your first guess is probably the correct one. Let’s check the angle of penetration.’ He muttered to his e-i, and five green lines materialized on one of the screens. ‘Oh, that’s interesting. Judging by that angle I’d say victim and assailant were almost the same height.’

  Sid walked round the examination table, then leaned forward and put his right hand on top of the wound, fingers extended. Each fingertip came to rest above a cut. His gave the coroner a quizzical glance.

  ‘That is strange,’ the coroner said slowly. ‘A five-bladed knife designed to mimic the human hand.’

  Sid backed away from the table. ‘At least that should show up easily in the database,’ he said, and began to instruct his e-i on the search.

  ‘We’ll open him up and sample the cellular structure,’ the coroner said. ‘Decay measurement will provide us with an accurate time of death.’

  ‘Really,’ Sid told Aldred. ‘You should think about leaving now.’

  ‘No. I need to see this through.’

  The coroner started with a Y-shaped cut through the skin from both shoulders down to the base of the sternum, then carrying on down the abdomen to the root of the penis. Sid looked round as the flesh was peeled away; he’d seen this enough times. A camera recorded the punctures and cuts to the rib bones above the heart. Then a small powerblade was used to cut cleanly through the clavicles and ribs, allowing the coroner and his assistants to remove the breastbone, exposing the organs below.

  Both the coroner and Dr Fransun were silent as they surveyed the damage. Sid peered over their shoulders.

  ‘What the hell did that?’ he asked in dismay. The North’s heart was in tatters, reduced to a purple-red mush surrounded by a jelly of clotted blood.

  ‘The blades moved once they were inside,’ the coroner said in shock. ‘Praise be to Allah, blades like fingers stabbed into him then closed around the heart, completely shredding it.’

  *

  The transparent globe was made out of a carbon silicon compound whose particular superstrength molecular structure could be produced only in zero gee. It measured three metres across and had a small access airlock where it was attached to the mountain-sized space habitat’s external axle spindle. Even with the material’s impressive qualities, it was eight centimetres thick to ensure anyone inside would be well protected. Jupiter orbit was a notoriously hostile radiation environment.

  But beautiful, Constantine North thought as he watched the black speck that was Ganymede’s shadow traverse the gas giant’s eternal storm bands. That was why he’d built the observation bubble, so he could float in a cross-legged yoga position like some kind of Buddha gyroscope and stare out at his bizarre yet wondrous chosen home. Some days he would gaze out at Jupiter’s fantastic racing clouds and whirling moons for hours at a time.

  As always, he watched the vast bands of variegated whites and pastel-browns and gentle blues gyrate against each other without any enhancements, content with everything his raw eyes could show him. From his vantage point, half a million kilometres above those frenetic clouds, the gas giant was a two-thirds crescent, big enough and bright enough to cast a spectral light across him. But cold. There was no heat in the pearl radiance that fell across his newly youthful face, no substance. Out here, beyond the Sun’s habitable zone, light by itself wasn’t strong enough to support planetary life.

  Out there in the blackness, little flares of blue flame flickered briefly around a dazzling silver flower. The Minantha was returning from Earth, manoeuvring on its final approach to the habitat amalgamation. A slim cylinder a hundred and thirty metres long, it contained the fusion reactor for its high-density ion drive – along with the crew section and several hundred tons of cargo – all surrounded by the vast curving petals of the mirror-silver coolant radiators. Jupiter possessed three of the ferry craft, all of them flying twenty-seven-month loops between the gas giant and Earth.

  Opening the Newcastle
gateway to Jupiter orbit back in 2088 had been a one-time operation, allowing Constantine to deliver all the industrial machinery and initial wheel-hostel he needed to start his small empire in magnificent isolation. It had taken a day and a half to shunt everything through, a process which left the modules tumbling all around Jupiter space. Without an anchor mechanism turning it to a stable gateway, the open end of a trans-spacial connection would oscillate through spacetime around its exit coordinate like the tip of a tree in a hurricane. It had taken Constantine, his sons, and their followers a month to gather all the modules and factories and tanks and generators together into a stable constellation around their chosen carbonaceous chondritic asteroid so that they could begin mining and processing the minerals into raw. Only then could they begin construction of their new home.

  Now, Constantine’s only known contact with Earth was through the ferry ships, which brought cargo from Gibraltar; mainly seeds and genetic samples to expand the habitat’s extensive genebank, but also specialist microfacture systems, and even sometimes a few people whom they’d recruited to add to their modest number of indigenous residents.

  A bell rang in an old familiar tone, stirring Constantine from his reverie. Strange what his mind prioritized, but that particular hundred-and-ten-year-old memory of a telephone ringing in a marbled hallway had always drawn his attention. Every time it used to ring, Kane North would hurry to answer it and nothing else mattered, even if he was spending a rare moment with his three brother-sons.

  Constantine closed his eyes against the icy splendour of the stormscape and the much closer glittering constellation of industrial systems which were his own creation. Still the ancient telephone bell rang, an impulse seeping into his brain at a much deeper level than any auditory nerve could reach. He let his consciousness rise through several levels of autonomous thoughts which now formed the strata of his resequenced brain until he reached the artificial layer, the one which stretched beyond his skull. His attention slipped across the multitude of connections until it reached the junction with the simplest nerve bundle that handled communications to the habitat AI. It opened like some third eye revealing a topology that could never exist in a Newtonian universe. The ethereal call of the telephone vanished.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  ‘Dad,’ Coby replied. ‘You have a message.’

  ‘From whom?’ There was no question of why he’d been disturbed. Coby, or indeed anyone at Jupiter, knew not to interrupt him when he was contemplating the universe. Whatever event occurred, it would have to be supremely important to warrant breaking his ruminations. The AI alone didn’t have the authority unless they’d suffered a catastrophe, like a full-on asteroid impact. Therefore there were only a very limited number of people who could send a message that got bumped up the nominal chain of command to this exalted altitude. Two, in total, out of all humanity. He made a guess which it was.

  ‘Augustine,’ Coby said.

  Right. Constantine breathed in, scenting the faintest tang of atmospheric filter purity, an air really too clean for humans. At the moment, time delay on a radio signal from Earth was forty minutes. This was not a conversation. And there were a limited number of things the brothers had left to say to one another. He made another guess as to the topic – and it wasn’t good. After all, Augustine’s medical and genetic technology wasn’t as advanced as anything available at Jupiter. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘It’s encrypted. A very heavy encryption. I’m assuming you have the key.’

  ‘Let us hope so. Route it to me.’

  The message began to play. Constantine’s eyes snapped open. His shocked consciousness viewed the autopsy images superimposed across supersonic cyclone spots the size of oceans charging along the storm bands to clash with counter-swirls in neighbouring bands amid explosion blooms of frozen ammonia and grubby ultraviolet-charged smog. An eerie backdrop indeed for the sharp functional graphics detailing cellular decay, blood chemistry composition, and hard-focus pictures of the sad butchered heart of a dead nephew-brother.

  The message ended, leaving him trying to blink away the tears which would never otherwise flow free in zero gee. And how arrogantly wrong he’d been about the topic. Not that it was a bad thing, but the fright he was experiencing was akin to the sight of his own grave opening up. He was aware of his heart rate increasing, of adrenalin rushing through his blood, flushing the skin which radiated the new heat back out towards the lonely, majestic gas giant beyond the bubble. No, he told himself, this is not fright. This is excitement that the challenge has finally come. It has been long enough.

  ‘Dad?’ Coby asked. ‘Is there a reply?’

  ‘No. Just an acknowledgement that the message was received. I will prepare an appropriate message of sympathy later.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’m coming down. Please have Clayton and Rebka meet me at home. And prep a lightwave ship for a trip to Earth.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  *

  Sid was watching the preliminary autopsy report slither across his iris smartcell grid. The neat tabulations on cellular decay and stomach contents were superimposed over the pasta he was twirling onto his fork. Around him, the bustle of the station canteen continued apace as people took their lunch break. He ignored it completely as he put the information together in a list he could use. The body had been immersed for barely two hours, which gave them some figures on how far it could have drifted down the Tyne. Which was almost irrelevant compared to the shock which was the estimated time of death: the morning of Friday the eleventh, three days ago. A North had been missing for three days and no one had called it in. That wasn’t merely suspicious, realistically it was impossible – and that was downright creepy.

  He was beginning to think it was a domestic that had gone horribly wrong. Simple scenario. Some poor girl had found the North was cheating on her (everyone knew they could never keep it in their trousers) and picked up some weird brass ornament in fury, lashing out with typical crime passionelle strength. Explaining the body dumped in the river was a little more tricky. But not impossible, especially if you assumed her family had gang connections; brothers and cousins rushing round to her place and carting the corpse away – oh, and extracting the smartcells, which was a big stretch. She’d be out of town now, having a long weekend break with witness friends and with a little help from a bytehead running up place-and-time verifiable credit bills. So when she returned at the end of this week – why, surprise, her North boyfriend was nowhere to be found. Call the police and put on a worried voice to report it. Yes Officer, I did think it was a little odd he didn’t call while I was away, but he’s been so busy lately . . .

  Sid munched down some garlic bread as he reviewed the premise. It simply wouldn’t fly, no matter how much he wanted it to. Not even having gang family connections could explain away the missing stealth smartcells. And the murder weapon – the wound didn’t allow for it to simply be a handy objet d’art you picked up in a moment of rage. Which in turn left him a huge problem. Fingerblades that could ram through a ribcage to shred the heart it protected? So far the database search had found nothing that matched. Not even close. No armament manufacturer files, nothing from history. His e-i was constantly expanding the search.

  ‘He needs you on the sixth floor.’

  ‘Huh?’ Sid looked up to see Jenson San standing beside the table. ‘Aye, man, don’t creep up on people like that.’

  ‘I didn’t. You were in a different universe.’

  Sid pointed at his eyes. ‘Autopsy results. It was a strange one, you know.’

  ‘No I don’t, actually. That information is case coded. And make sure you keep it that way.’

  Sid wasn’t sure if that was a bitch slap or not. ‘I know my responsibilities, man.’

  ‘Come on. He wants you.’

  ‘This is my lunch break.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘I have a call code you know.’

  Jenson San
’s face remained impassive verging on contemptuous. ‘If the Chief Constable had wanted to use that he would have. Instead he found out where you were and sent me to collect you. Do you understand, Detective?’

  Punching the senior staff representative in the middle of a police canteen probably wasn’t the best idea the day after you return from suspension. Satisfying, though.

  Sid took a big bite of garlic and exhaled in Jenson San’s direction. ‘Lead on, then, man.’

  O’Rouke had a corner office on the sixth floor. Of course. Sid hadn’t been in it many times. He could’ve sworn it got bigger each time he did visit.

  The Chief was sitting behind a broad desk which had a wall of screens that were rolling down as Sid walked in. ‘Out,’ he barked at Jenson San. The door closed and the blue secure seal lit up around it. Both window walls turned opaque.

  ‘What?’ Sid exclaimed as O’Rouke glared at him.

  ‘Not you,’ O’Rouke admitted. ‘I’ve just had a message from the Brussels Security Commissioner himself. This case just became a whole lot more complicated. Access to all data is now restricted to those already working on the case. Nobody else is to be brought in, no external agency work is to be contracted until further notice. It’s been reclassified: Global Restriction.’

  ‘You could crap on that okay. Why?’

  ‘They don’t bother telling me that. All I know is that some specialist supervisor is coming up from London this afternoon to take charge. Fucking Brussels bastards. Take charge! This is my city. No government fuckface comes prancing up here and tells me what goes down on my streets.’

  ‘Augustine must have stuck his oar in. Which is odd, since Aldred said they wouldn’t.’

  ‘This isn’t the Norths. This is something else.’

  And Sid could see that not knowing was hurting O’Rouke badly. ‘Do they want me to close it down?’

  ‘No. That’s the weirdest piece of this crap. You’re to keep going.’

  ‘But if I can’t call in experts when I need them, I can’t get anywhere.’

  ‘I know. Look, Hurst, you’ve built up a shitload of data this morning. Get it all processed ready for this supervisor dick. He’s the one who’s going to say where the investigation goes. Your priority now is to brief your team and make fucking sure nothing gets out. I’ll send down some network nerds to beef up your systems security.’