Necropath (10 page)
Authors: Eric Brown
“You said that Weiss called his wife?” Vaughan said.
Chandra nodded. “Around three hours ago.”
“Did you hear what he said?”
“Of course, I was in the same room.” Chandra shrugged. “He told her he’d been delayed and wouldn’t be home till dawn.”
Vaughan thought about it. “It might have been a prearranged signal, warning Genevieve that he’d been rumbled.”
“Maybe.” Chandra shrugged. “But why? Why would she kill her son and take her own life, just because her husband’s fake identity is about to be discovered?”
Vaughan regarded the dead woman, thinking of the cold oblivion that had taken Genevieve Weiss. Some intimation of that oblivion, recalled from all those years ago, sent a shiver through him.
Chandra glanced at him. “She’s in a better place now,” he murmured. “They both are.”
Vaughan turned a withering look on the cop. “Are you quite sure about that, Jimmy? Are you sure they’re not both stone cold dead and gone?”
Chandra opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. He turned his back on Vaughan and spoke into his handset.
Vaughan moved across the room, pausing before an archway leading to an unlit room. He passed into the room, and the concealed lighting obligingly illuminated Genevieve Weiss’s studio. Compared to the rest of the house, this room was spartan: a big com array stood on a desk in the centre of a polished parquet floor and a dozen plasma graphics adorned the walls.
Vaughan crossed to the computer and seated himself before the screen. He activated the machine, accessed files, and for the next ten minutes scrolled through the portfolio of Genevieve Weiss’s collected work.
He spent a second or two with each graphic, not sure what he was looking for—some clue, some visual link to anything that had gone before.
He was almost ready to give up when he struck gold.
The girl stared out of the screen, the expression on her beautiful face caught between ecstasy and agony. She seemed to be floating, bare feet trailing, arms outstretched in the approximation of a crucifix.
Vaughan stared at her face. He commanded the computer to create a print of the graphic.
Chandra appeared beneath the arch. “I’ve just spoken to the head of the dispatch team at the ‘port. They’ve been through the ship from top to bottom.”
“And?”
“It’s empty. Apparently an outside team of hauliers came for the container an hour ago. The security guards had voice-code authority from Weiss himself, so they let the hauliers through.”
“I’ll scan the guards when I get to the ‘port,” Vaughan said, “read the hauliers’ faces. I might come up with something.”
“Weiss must have thought of that. The hauliers were Zen cultists, wearing the masks of Denied Identity—or rather they were disguised as cultists. The case could be anywhere by now, even off the Station.”
“Great.” Vaughan tore the graphic from the printer and held it up to Chandra. “It’s the girl I found in the freighter, Jimmy. Elly Jenson. She’s the subject of a Weiss graphic called
The Adoration of the Chosen One.”
Chandra made a printout of the Jenson pix. Seconds later his handset chimed. He took the call and spoke rapidly in Hindi. He nodded, his expression serious, and cut the connection.
“That was forensic. They know what killed Weiss—a drug called rhapsody.” He looked at Vaughan. “Probably what killed Genevieve and her son, too.”
“The same stuff that Tiger took...” Vaughan began.
Chandra went on, “They’ve traced its point of origin, too. I’ll give you three guesses.”
“Not Verkerk’s World?”
“Right first time,” Chandra said. “How about this: quite apart from whatever Weiss was bringing shielded to Earth, he was also smuggling rhapsody?”
“It’s possible, I suppose.” Vaughan shrugged. “I wonder where the Jenson kid fits in?”
“You tell me. I’ve got alerts out for her. And we’re trying to trace dealers in rhapsody.”
When the Scene of Crime team arrived minutes later, Vaughan and Chandra left the villa and boarded the flier. The cop ferried him to an east-side downchute station, and Vaughan nodded to Chandra and climbed out. He pushed his way through the noisy crowd as the flier took off and climbed into the dawn sky. Clutching the scrolled graphic of the Chosen One, he dropped to Level Four and walked the kilometre home through the still-busy streets, the concentrated mind-noise drumming in his head like a migraine.
Fifteen minutes later he let himself into his apartment. He sat before the window without turning on the light, reached out and fumbled on the table for the vial of chora. He washed it down with a swig of stale beer from a bottle he found wedged down the cushion of the chair.
Quickly the drug took effect, reducing the mind-hum and allowing him to relax. As the sun rose on the other side of the Station, the night turned from navy to grey and pale light flooded the apartment.
He stood up and found half a dozen magnets in a storage unit. He clamped the graphic of Elly onto the wall, then slumped back into his chair and stared at
The Adoration of the Chosen One.
Common sense told him to drop the case. Forget about the Chosen One and whatever Weiss had been up to. Then he remembered the kid’s terror back at the ship.
He had a couple of weeks’ leave due—he’d contact the ‘port and tell them he wasn’t coming in for a while. Then he’d concentrate on the Elly Jenson case.
He tapped Dr. Rao’s code into his handset, got through to the Indian, and arranged to meet him at nine that evening.
* * * *
 |
OSBORNE
It was two in the morning and the Siren Bar was filling up.
The dance floor was a mass of bodies, writhing to the rhythmic thump of the latest pop hit. Fat foreign men sat at tables, half-naked girls squirming on their laps. The girls sucked on bottles of beer, feigning interest and animation, but achieving only a look of boredom.
From time to time couples left the bar and passed Sukara on their way to the cubicles. The girls smirked at her as they clung to their rich customers. Sukara tried to ignore them, but felt herself blush beneath the gaze of the men. She drank her beer, lining up the bottles on the bar before her. Fat Cheng had once told her that she drank too much. “Beer okay, Fat Cheng,” she had replied. “I take plenty yahd.”
He’d shaken his big head. “Not you drunk I worry about, little Monkey. Beer no good for your insides, your liver.”
Sukara had just shrugged. She had more to concern her than what beer might be doing to her insides.
A drunken Indian labourer was arguing with two tall escort girls further along the bar. He kept pawing at their breasts, trying to run a hand up inside their thighs. One girl backed off, screeching at the Indian in machine-gun rapid Thai. The guy pulled out his wallet, staggering with the effort, and waved baht in the face of the first girl. She hissed at him, turning her face away contemptuously. The second girl whispered to the Indian and pointed along the bar at Sukara. He looked up, squinted, then staggered towards her. Behind him, Sukara saw that the girls were laughing.
He slurred something at her in Hindi, waving the cash, a measly fifty-baht note.
Sukara turned away, ignoring him. Her lurched towards her and pincered her arm in a painful grip.
“Let go!”
“I said, come with me!”
For a split second she considered telling him where to go—but something nasty in his eyes told her that that would not be wise. The alternative was to go with him, and pray that the bastard wouldn’t turn violent.
Quickly Sukara grabbed the note and slipped off her stool.
She led the Indian to one of the tiny cubicles, not the room she used for the Ee-tees; she didn’t want the memory of what she did with the Indian tainting her special room. He collapsed against the door, staring at her and unfastening his trousers. Sukara slipped the baht under the mattress and pulled down her skirt, leaving her T-shirt on: she did not like going with human men, and tried to keep as much of herself covered as possible.
She knelt on the edge of the bed and held on to the rail on the wall, letting him have her from behind. She heard him belch, smelled the beery fumes in the air. She felt him thrusting between her legs, his first few attempts missing and sliding up and across her back. She felt his fingers forcing apart her legs, felt him try again, this time entering her brutally. He was so big that she feared he might tear her. She closed her eyes and cried out in pain as he thrust repeatedly. She pulled forward so that he slid out before he came, and her relief was immediate.
The first blow struck her across the back of her head, so painful that she thought he must have picked something up, or pulled a cosh from somewhere. The blow rang through her skull. She fell face down on the bed, protecting her head from his punches. She would not cry out, would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that he was hurting her. She curled into a ball, covering her face with her forearms. He pulled her towards him, prized her arms away from her face, and backhanded her across the jaw. Now she knew why his blows hurt so much: his fingers were studded with big, square-faced, imitation-gold rings. Behind his flailing hands, Sukara stared at the ludicrous sight of his huge cock bobbing up and down in time to the blows. She leapt forward, snatched at his scrotum and twisted with all her strength. He yelled out in rage and pain and fell to the floor, curled protectively around his injury. Sukara grabbed her skirt and skittered from the cubicle down the corridor and into her Ee-tee room. She locked the door behind her and collapsed onto the bed.
Minutes later she heard the Indian barge from the cubicle and hurry out into the bar, cursing. If he complained to Fat Cheng, then Sukara would tell him that he had hit her, and Fat Cheng would throw the bastard out.
She sat up and felt her head for bumps, then tested the tender area around her chin. As the pain receded, she smiled in pained satisfaction at the thought of the expression on his face when she’d grabbed his balls. It was the last thing they expected, men who hit working girls—that the girls might turn and fight back.
She went with men only rarely now; Ee-tees paid Fat Cheng well for her, and he allowed her to turn down men when she wanted. She wished she hadn’t been so greedy tonight, and had told the Indian to get lost.
Three years ago, before the attack that left her scarred, aliens came rarely to the Siren Bar. Then, she had gone with humans; some men had treated her well, were gentle and considerate, but they were rare. Most men were rough and selfish, others brutal. She could count on a beating every other night. She became accustomed to the rough treatment in time, might even have accepted it if not for the fact that always, at the back of her mind, was the fear that the aggression would turn to something more: again and again she’d heard of customers killing girls in the supposed safety of bars and clubs.
Then she had been attacked, and as she lay recovering in hospital she thought that this must be the end. In fact, it had turned out to be the beginning of a new phase of her life.