Great North Road (10 page)

Vermekia made an expressive gesture taking in the whole world. “The fucking obvious by the looks of things.”

The five-car convoy turned into Parkhurst Road. Holloway Prison was on the right, a confined campus of functional concrete blocks with big metal grid gates already opening to allow the cars through into the parking yard. This latest version of the prison had been built in 2099, a kit that had been assembled on site by big cranes, methodical automata, and minimal human labor or skill. Rooms and corridors had all been pre-fitted with systems and wiring and plumbing in the cybernetic factory that mass-produced them to government standard; they were also painted and tiled to requirement. All anyone had to do to complete the integration and get a finished building was plug the wires together and join the pipes. That was the theory, which didn’t quite explain why it was eight hundred million euros over budget and seven years behind schedule when it finally did reopen for inmates in 2106.

Ever since the European Trans-Space Bureau (ET-SB) had opened a gateway to Minisa in 2050, which was backed first by subsidized settlement packages then latterly with the GE’s Opportunity Immigration policy to transport the chronically unemployable along with low-level criminal offenders to the new lands, there had been a question about the need for prisons back on humanity’s old homeworld. Simply locking offenders up had been going out of fashion for a long time, a social improvement trend accelerated by the opportunity to simply dump offenders light-years from their offending environment, in places where they were physically unable to repeat the offense—mainly because they found themselves in the middle of a wilderness with title to a hectare of land, a tent, a bag of seed corn, a toolbox, and a disappearing cloud of dust as the Resettlement Service bus trundled away to dump the next undesirable on a patch of impoverished soil a kilometer away across the plains.

Some people, however, despite the best efforts of psychiatrists, drugs, social workers, specialist education teachers, and good old-fashioned brutal guards, simply weren’t fit to be released anywhere no matter how many light-years distant from frightened taxpayers. For the truly dangerous—the psychotic, the serial killers and pedophiles, the die-for-the-cause fanatics and the just plain evil—prison remained the only option. In all such cases it was for life. And in 2143, life really did mean until you die.

Holloway Prison was for female inmates, one of only two in all of Grande Europe’s United Kingdom region. Its bleak physical structure and smartdust tagging was all an acknowledgment that the only way those inmates would ever be coming out was as a pile of ash. To emphasize the point, it had its own crematorium tacked onto the back of the hospital block.

Life inside was regimented. All activities had a set period, and routine ruled everything. It helped the warders keep life running as smoothly as possible when confining people who enjoyed the pain and suffering of others, and in many cases themselves.

Everyone knew the routine. Intimately. They obeyed it obsessively. They were attuned to it with a near-psychic intensity. It was the voltage running through the entire structure that powered them through each day. The slightest disturbance could be felt shivering subliminally along the pastel-green corridors and poster-covered cells and positively nineteenth-century workrooms.

At two o’clock the governor was in her office for the scant privacy it afforded so she could receive a most unusual call. When she summoned three senior staff in to brief them, the result outside the administration block was the same as a wolf pack lifting their noses to the full moon and sniffing the blood of wounded prey.

Something was going down. Something new. Something different. The sensation howled through the interlinked blocks, sharp peaks and dips in the voltage flow. Aggression, always the twin of uncertainty in secure units, began to manifest. There were scuffles, arguments, abuse aimed at the staff. The handball game in the yard was stopped after the second broken nose.

At three o’clock the governor ordered everyone back to their cells to cool off. The routine was well and truly smashed and broken. Each cell wing resonated to the ragged chorus of obscene songs and screamed death threats. The governor herself led five warders down J-block, subjecting herself to a variety of innovative objects that could be hurled through the small window bars on each door. The obscenities she didn’t even notice anymore. It was almost ritual. What everyone really wanted to know was WTF was going down. After she passed their door, inmates would press up against the small barred windows and peer through eagerly.

The governor stopped outside cell 13 and put her hand on the palmkey pad. Two guards drew their Taser batons in readiness. They needn’t have bothered; the occupant was calm and silent.

Angela Tramelo stared out into the corridor with an unnervingly serene expression. Looking in at her, the prison staff all had the same disturbing thought: It was as though she’d been waiting twenty years for this moment, that she’d somehow always known it would arrive.

“Come with us, please, Angela,” the governor asked.

There was a moment’s pause as the guards clutched their Taser batons a fraction tighter, then Angela nodded. “Of course.” She walked out of the cell into a cacophony of jeering and flaming, shit-smeared toilet rolls dropping from the upper cells, all of which she ignored.

The guards formed up to escort her as the governor led them back out of J-block. They didn’t get too close, and held their batons ready at all times. Angela had never assaulted a prison employee in the twenty years of her incarceration, but they still didn’t trust her. Not someone convicted for slaughtering fourteen people in one night.

The conference room she was taken to was in the administration block. It had a carpet, office chairs with leather cushioning, a table, wallscreens, and a big holographic pane. It was warm, the fans in the wall-mounted heaters rumbling away steadily. There was even a window, covered in a thick metal grid, that looked out onto the street. Angela glanced around the room almost in trepidation. This was a universe from memory so distant it was almost fiction, a world outside prison walls. The unfamiliarity of it, of what had once been her life, threatened to crack her resolution after all this time.
And how about that for irony?
she thought bitterly.

“Please sit,” the governor said.

Angela did as she was asked, taking the chair at the head of the table. The governor sat next to her. She seemed uncomfortable. Angela enjoyed that. The reversal finally beginning; somewhere in the background there must surely be the sound of giant cogwheels rumbling into motion, cogwheels big enough to turn the whole universe around.

“Angela,” the governor began. “There’s been an unusual development in relation to your case.”

“Bring them in.”

The governor gave her a frankly startled glance. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not going to attack anybody. I’m not going to create a scene. Bring them in to tell me what kind of deal they’re offering. That’s what they’re here for, isn’t it?”

“I’m on your side, here, Angela. I’m trying to prepare you for what may be a shock.”

“Of course you are, that’s very liberal, very
you
. Because after twenty years in here I’m a real fucking delicate flower. Now let’s get on with it.”

The governor drew a breath. “As you wish.”

Eight of them trooped in. Three woman, five men; the civilians dressed in suits, the four Human Defense Alliance officers in smart uniforms. Officialdom at the top of their game, in positions that gave a solid kick up the arse of democratic accountability. And they were unaccustomed to being this nervous. It wasn’t just being in the presence of a notoriously vicious murderess that had tensed up their muscles and produced unnatural body language; it was what dark shadow might prove to be standing behind her that was their fear.

Angela ignored all of them except one.
He
was there, as she always knew he would be. Older of course, unlike her. That would anger him, she thought contentedly. He hadn’t even been important back then, a junior brown-nose. But she’d known he would be somebody one day, he was that repellent, straight-arrow type, never going anywhere else but up.

She stared at him, keen to study his reactions, divining any emotional conflict their renewed proximity kindled behind his killer-cold brown eyes. Slowly and deliberately she parted her lips with a mirthless smile. It was raw mockery, and he’d know that. In response she perceived a tight flash of anger, quickly concealed. It made her smile broaden.

One of the civilians, some shitbag high-rank government lawyer, started telling her there was a possible change in her situation. His voice droned as irritatingly as a fly on a window. “… without prejudicing your legal position …” She paid him no attention. “… full cooperation with an ongoing investigation would be regarded as …” It was Vance Elston she was interested in. Vance Elston she wanted to twist and writhe in uncertainty and remorse. “… we can unfortunately offer no guarantee …” Vance Elston’s smug, self-righteous face weeping in terror as he finally confronted the hideous monster he’d tried so hard to deny ever existed.

Angela held her hand up, and the lawyer fell silent. They all regarded her with nervous expectancy. Still the only one she looked at was Elston. There was the sweetest-ever taste of victory in her voice as she asked him: “It’s come back, hasn’t it?”

*

Ian and Sid took turns in the zone booth all afternoon. By six thirty that evening they’d covered the Tyne all the way up to South Benwell on the north bank and the viaduct over the River Derwent where it spilled into the Tyne on the south bank. That was a lot higher upriver than the tidal flow current could carry a body in two hours, but Sid was being super-cautious. In total they found eleven possible gaps in the mesh surveillance, most of them a lot wider than the first by the Tyne Bridge support. After reviewing the entire Dunston Marina, Sid considered it the most likely place; there were just so many boats moored there that weren’t fully covered by the local meshes.

“Eleven?” Eva said when Ian finished the final section. “That’s a lot of fieldwork. And we’ve lost a day as well, so there’s not going to be much evidence left.”

Sid yawned as he stretched his arms out. In front of him, one of the wallscreens was displaying a simple map with each of the eleven gaps. “Not my problem.”

The zone booth door shut as Ian emerged. “Are you at least allowed to cordon off the areas?”

“I don’t know,” Sid admitted. “I’ll have to ask O’Rouke.” Which wasn’t something he wanted to do. He swiveled the chair around. “Abner?”

The two Norths looked at each other. “No, sorry, boss,” Abner replied.

“Seriously, man, no name at all?”

“The genetic sample confirmed he’s a 2,” Ari said. “We have spoken personally to all our brothers. They’re all accounted for.”

“So he was a B or a C,” Sid said.

“Has to be,” Ari agreed. “But Brinkelle’s organization claims none of her 2s are missing.”

“And Jupiter?”

“Aldred talked to Augustine. A message was sent to Constantine. He claims no C 2s are on Earth.”

“This is bullshit,” Ian snapped at Abner and Ari. “You’re covering up for something.”

Abner stood up and walked over to Ian, who wasn’t giving ground. “One of my brothers has been murdered, you cocksucking little twat.”

“Enough!” Sid said.

Ian and Abner glared at each other. Any second now a fist would fly. They didn’t care about the internal sensors and official log. Sid knew he was going to have to get that log altered before the case file was folded and handed over to the prosecution office. There was a bytehead on the second floor he knew could help.

“Abner,” Sid said. “Give me your best guess what’s happened?”

With one final derisory sneer at Ian, Abner turned away. “There’s two possibles here: Either there was a 2 we didn’t know about. It’s unlikely, but not impossible. Or Constantine and Brinkelle aren’t being entirely truthful.”

“Why?” Ian asked.

Abner shrugged. “I cannot think of a single reason.” He shot Ian a look. “Certainly not corporate—not money.”

“Okay,” Sid said quickly.

“There’s a third option,” Ari said.

Abner gave him a startled glance.

“Which is?” Sid asked.

“There have been attempts to imitate us in the past.”

“You said you’d talked to all the 2s,” Eva said.

“We did,” Ari said. “But to be real, that was a thirty-second call to ask them if they’re alive.”

“Pull them in,” Ian said. “Interrogate them. Take DNA samples. It’s the only way to find an imposter.”

“Good luck with that,” Abner said.

“We’d need Augustine’s permission,” Sid mused. He didn’t like to think of the fallout from that request to O’Rouke. Best to sound out Aldred first.

“His cooperation,” Ari corrected.

Sid was about to answer when they all heard a the drone of a helicopter getting louder outside. Lorelle pushed off the console desk, letting her chair roll over to the nearest window, and peered up into the night sky. It had started snowing again. “Kamov 130,” she said approvingly. “Auxiliary tail prop. Those guys are fast. I don’t know an agency that can afford one of those for police work.”

Everyone looked at Sid.

“Our new case chief?” Eva suggested.

“Well, don’t ask me,” Sid protested. “I get told fuck-all.”

“So what’s next?” Ian asked.

Sid rubbed his hands across his face. All he wanted to do was go home, but that wasn’t going to happen. “No point in us all staying on. Wrap and seal your files, then get yourselves off home. I’ll formulate the follow-ups that’ve come out of today’s investigation ready to show the new bloke.”

He was still working on the official requests for forensic investigation of the river sites at seven thirty when O’Rouke finally summoned him up to the sixth floor. When he did get to the big corner office he wasn’t entirely surprised to find a tall Afro-American in a dark suit waiting to greet him with a firm handshake and an appraising stare. Agent Vance Elston couldn’t have been a more obvious covert government operative if he’d had SPOOK tattooed across his forehead. However, having Aldred waiting in the office as well was unexpected.