Great North Road (7 page)

“We need it,” Jenson muttered in a low voice.

“Yeah, I worked that one out for myself. Thanks, man.”

A quarter hour later Sid left for the city morgue, which was housed in a modern annex to the glass-and-steel towers of Arevalo Medical’s Royal Victoria Infirmary.

As he drew into the car park next to the city morgue block Sid saw notices proclaiming that parking would be suspended in two months so footings could be sunk for the new oncology clinic. “So where do we park?” he muttered to himself as he crunched his way over the snow and into the warm lobby.

For all its clean modern lines and well-maintained interior, the morgue always depressed him. He’d lost track years ago of just how many grieving parents, partners, and family members he’d escorted in to identify a body. Thankfully there was no one in the lobby waiting for that grim task, though the little group standing beside the reception counter was almost as off-putting.

Chloe Healy turned from the two men she was talking to. “Detective Hurst, this is Aldred North,” she said.

Aldred shook Sid’s hand, showing a professional smile. “Northumberland Interstellar security director.” He was in his late forties, wearing a suit and coat that must have been in the eight-thousand-euro range, a simple demonstration of exactly how far up the company hierarchy he was, which told everyone he was a 2North. “Sorry, but officially I’m your insurance cover liaison for the case. Hope you don’t mind. I’ll try to be as unobtrusive as I can be.”

Sid gave him a neutral gaze, quite proud he could maintain such perfect composure.
Chloe must know. She’s O’Rouke’s creature, there’s no way she can’t.
“That’s fine, sir. I’m just sorry this had to happen at all.”

“Thank you. And this is Dr. Fransun, our company’s senior medical officer.”

“Doctor.” Sid shook hands, noticing how nervous the man was. But then as it was his boss’s brother-son who’d been murdered last night, it was understandable enough.

“Do we know who it is yet?” Aldred asked.

From the corner of his eye, Sid caught Chloe’s wince. “Not yet, no, which in itself is interesting.”

“How so?” Aldred asked.

“Whoever committed the murder knew what they were doing. The absence of data on this case indicates we’re dealing with a professional, someone who knows how to cover up afterward and make our job as difficult as possible.”

“You mean he was
hit
?”

“Until we know who he is and fill in some background, I can’t speculate on why he was killed. Do you know of any member of your family being threatened?”

“Nothing outside the usual cranks, no.”

“Well, if anything does come to light …”

“Absolutely.”

The city’s chief coroner came out to greet them. “I’m ready for you now,” he announced solemnly.

“Then I’m back to the office,” Chloe said. “Keep me updated, please, Detective.”

Sid gave her his best insincere smile. “Of course.”

“So how is O’Rouke?” Aldred asked as they walked along the corridors to the exam room.

“I believe he mentioned something about getting a result.”

Aldred snorted in sour amusement. “My family wants a certainty here, Detective. We’re prepared to wait for that. Don’t cut corners on our account.”

“With the funding you’ve made available, I won’t have to.”

The corpse was resting on a surgical-style table in the middle of the exam room. Directly above him, long segmented metal arms were attached to the ceiling around the bright lighting circle, each ending in a different kind of sensor. Around them were the holographic cameras to record the procedure. Screens made up one wall, while small sample desks lined the other, each with its own stock of instruments.

Sid and the others put on pale blue smocks, with tight gloves to prevent any possible evidence contamination. Two assistants joined the coroner.

Under the harsh lighting the corpse somehow looked even worse than he had the night before on the boat. His skin had dried out and whitened to a classic pallor, leaving the big chest wound almost black by comparison.

The coroner activated the cameras and started his official commentary. His assistants wheeled instrument trolleys over to the examination table.

He began with a spectroscopic analysis, bringing down one of the sensor arms and sliding it smoothly across the body. “Checking for contaminants,” he explained.

Sid thought that was taking procedure too far; the North had been in the Tyne for hours, he’d be saturated with pollution. He said nothing, though. Samples were taken from under the fingernails; hair was combed out. Swabs were applied to mouth, nose, and ears. Then they performed a thorough visual inspection.

“Note the minor abrasions on both heels,” the coroner said. “They all run in one direction.”

“He was dragged,” Sid said.

“Correct. Postmortem.”

“He was dumped in the river after death,” Sid explained to Aldred.

“Early days, Detective,” the coroner said. He turned the left leg and indicated a three-centimeter graze. “Again, postmortem, 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 that 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 postmortem.”

“Roughly how long would that take?” Sid asked.

“I’ll catalog 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 millimeter—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 postmortem.”

“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 3-D 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 around one another 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 centimeters 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 around 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 around 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 breastplate, 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 only be produced in zero g. It measured three meters across and had a small access air lock where it was attached to the mountain-sized space habitat’s external axle spindle. Even with the material’s impressive qualities, it was eight centimeters thick to ensure that 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 one another without any enhancements, content with everything his raw eyes could show him. From his vantage point, half a million kilometers 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, maneuvering on its final approach to the habitat amalgamation. A slim cylinder a hundred thirty meters 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 onetime 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 that left the modules tumbling all around Jupiter space. Without an anchor mechanism turning it to a stable gateway, the open end of a trans-spatial 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 110-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.