The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (160 page)

“If she’s vanished there can hardly be an innocent explanation.”

“No, I concede that. But if she’s simply fallen in with the wrong people I can clean her off my case files. That doesn’t help you, I know; and I’m not sure I want that outcome, either.”

Warren gave her a sidelong glance. “I don’t get that.”

“If she is tied in with this somehow, and don’t ask how, please, then she’s the first solid lead we’ve had on the whole Guardians’ shotgun problem.”

“I see that, but … She’s a Halgarth; we’re nearly always the victims of the Guardians in the shotgun cases, so how can chasing her give you a lead to them?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps this is some new kind of follow-up operation by the Guardians. We need to know a lot more, and the only people who can fill in some gaps are the other two girls.”

A Boeing 22022 supersonic VTOL plane was waiting for them at the town’s airfield. It was a short flight to the heavily wooded Kolda Valley where Trisha’s branch of the family maintained a holiday lodge. They landed on a meadow clearing below the elaborate raised wooden building. The lodge was built into the forest, using seven giant morangu trees as its principal pillars. It was as if some ancient sailing ship had somehow embedded itself in the trees, and had slowly been expanded over the decades with additional rooms and platforms grafted on. The roof was a shaggy thatch of long local reeds, which had dried to a dusty ocher. A small stream wound out of the deeper forest at the side of the supporting trunks, skirting the edge of the grassy meadow to fill various stony pools.

Trisha was waiting for them beside a clump of lazthorn bushes growing above the largest pool. She wore a bikini top and a pair of white canvas shorts; a long towel was laid out beside the water where she’d been sun-bathing. The sophistication that was her heritage had left her, Renne decided as she walked over. It wasn’t just the cheap vacation slob-out clothes; the girl was more thoughtful and pensive now, where before she’d been chirpy and confident. Her green butterfly wing OCtattoos had been expanded down her cheeks, extensions lacking the artistry of the original sections.

“Sorry to bother you again,” Renne said. “I’ve just got a few more questions.”

“It’s more than that,” Trisha said tetchily. “I’ve had a whole load of calls today telling me I have to see you.” She glanced back toward the elevated lodge.

Renne just caught a glimpse of a young man standing in a doorway to one of the verandas along the front. He quickly stepped back through an open door into the dimly lit interior. “Sorry about that,” Renne said. “But I do want to catch the people who did this to you.”

“Isabella said you never would, that we’d just be another ongoing file your office would forget about after a month.”

“That’s an interesting comment. Normally, I would have agreed with her—off the record, of course.”

Trisha gave a listless shrug. “Has something happened?”

“I’m not sure. First of all, I need to know if you’ve remembered anything about Howard Liang that might be relevant, something which you’d overlooked before.”

“Such as?”

“Something that didn’t make sense at the time. Perhaps something he said. Something simple that he should have known, like a piece of history, or a Dynasty name. Or did you ever meet anyone by surprise, someone he was uncomfortable around.”

“Don’t think so, no. I can’t remember anything like that.”

“How about an incident from his childhood. If he grew up on Far Away he had a very different upbringing from ordinary Commonwealth children. Something might have slipped out that seemed odd.”

“No. That’s what the reporter asked as well.”

“What reporter?”

“Er.” Trisha’s fingers fluttered slightly, puppeting her virtual hand. “Brad Myo. He was from Earl News. He said he’d got your permission to talk to me.” She gave Renne an anxious look. “Didn’t he?”

Renne became very still, something like a ghost’s finger was stroking her spine. “No,” she said quietly. “We don’t issue any authorization to reporters to do anything, let along talk to crime victims. That’s up to individual citizens.” To her surprise, Trisha started crying. The girl sank down onto the towel, great sobs shaking her shoulders.

“I’m so fucking stupid,” she wailed, and started hitting her fists against her legs. “Does everybody in the Commonwealth know? Why am I so gullible? He said you’d allowed him to see me so he could produce a sympathetic story. I believed him, I really did. Oh, God, I hate myself. I didn’t know. He was so sincere.”

Renne gave Warren an awkward glance, then knelt beside the distraught girl. “Hey, come on. If this is who I think it was, he would have fooled me, too.” Her e-butler had already cross-referenced Earl News. It was in one of Paula’s reports. The company didn’t exist, but someone had used it once before when he interviewed Wendy Bose. According to Paula Myo, his description matched Bradley Johansson. “What did he look like?”

Trisha sniveled. “Tall. With really fair hair. And he was old. I don’t mean close to rejuvenation. You just knew he’d lived a couple of centuries at least.”

“Shit,” Renne hissed under her breath.

Trisha gave her an uncertain glance, tears ready to burst forth again.

“What? Do you know who it was?”

“He sounds like somebody known to us, yes.”

“Oh, no! I’m going to get a memory wipe, I swear I am. I’m going to wipe out my whole life; everything, what I’ve done, who I am, my name. All of it. Wipe it and not use a secure store.” She glared at Warren. “And if the Dynasty won’t do it, I’ll go to some illegal back street clinic. I don’t care. I’d rather wind up retarded than go through life knowing this.”

“Easy there,” Renne said. She rubbed the girl’s trembling shoulders.

“You’re being far too hard on yourself. Just tell me what happened with Brad Myo. Please?”

“Nothing much, I guess. He turned up at the apartment a day before I came back here. Isabella had already left, and Catriona had gone to work. He told me he’d cleared the meeting with you; that’s the only reason I let him in. I should have checked with you, shouldn’t I? God, how dumb!”

“It’s done now. Please, don’t beat yourself up over this. What did he want to know?”

“The same as you did. Howard’s name, where he worked, how long I’d known him. All the basics.”

“I see. Well, don’t worry, there’s no real harm done.”

“Really?” The girl was pathetically eager.

“Yes. He’s just a stupid con man trying to sell his story to a major news show. None of them will run it.”

“Absolutely not,” Warren assured her.

“Okay.”

“Has Isabella been in touch recently?” Renne asked, making it casual.

“Her old address code isn’t working, and I need to ask her the same questions.”

“No.” Trisha lowered her head. “I haven’t talked to many people since I got back. I don’t want to. I wasn’t kidding when I said I want all this out of my brain. It’s too difficult.”

“I’m sure it seems that way. But don’t be too rash, will you?”

“Maybe.”

“Did Isabella say where she was going before she left Daroca?”

“She was going skiing on Jura. There was a whole bunch of them hiring a chalet together for a fortnight. She tried to get me to come along, but I didn’t want to. She’s always going on trips with friends.”

“Which friends, exactly?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t know any of them.”

“Okay. Never mind, we’ll look into it.” Renne stood up and gestured to Warren, who nodded. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, Trisha. I apologize for putting you through this, but you have been helpful.”

The girl simply nodded, not looking up. Renne regarded her with a touch of concern before walking back to the VTOL.

“So who was the reporter?” Warren asked as the hatch shut behind them.

Renne settled herself into the deep leather cushioning of the chair. “It could be Bradley Johansson himself. The description is about right, and he’s posed as a reporter before using that company name.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Yeah.” She watched through the oval window as the plane took off. The light green patch of meadow shrank away quickly behind them as the acceleration pressed her down.

“But that makes no sense,” Warren said. “What would Johansson need to see Trisha for? The operation was over.”

“Good question. And he took a hell of a risk going to see her, too, he even used Earl News as a cover, which we knew about. It’s not like him to be that sloppy. Those questions were clearly important to him.”

“Why?”

Renne shook her head. She didn’t quite trust herself to look directly at Warren. Unlike Trisha, he wasn’t stupid. There was one explanation that fitted all too easily. An explanation that had implications she really didn’t enjoy. It would also mean she’d been quite right about the whole shotgun setup from the very start.
It wasn’t the Guardians after all. And I don’t think it was the Halgarths. Christabel had no reason to lie to me. That doesn’t leave many options.

Mark Vernon sat in his rented Ford Lapanto as the drive array steered it along the six-lane highway down through the northern tail of the Chunata hills that formed the back of New Costa’s Trinity district. The slopes with their brown native scrub bushes and desert palms were decorated with large white houses encased behind tall walls and hedges like precious artworks in an exclusive store. It was an area favored by financial management types, who never liked to stray far from the office. A line of composite and glass skyscrapers marked out Trinity’s eastern boundary, winding along the base of the hills. They were home to various banks, credit houses, brokers, venture capitalists, and offworld currency exchanges.

The Lapanto’s drive array turned the car off the highway. There was a junction at the bottom of the ramp, where an ancient road began its lazy curve around the hill. A dilapidated sign called it Bright Light Canyon. Mark switched off the drive array, and started driving the car himself. Gritty yellow-brown soil had almost completely covered the thin layer of asphalt, turning the road into little more than a dirt track. Dead-looking scrub bushes were scattered over the slope below and above, their lower trunks buttressed by the conical mounds of nipbug nests. Behind the swathe of arid vegetation were crumbling white walls of enzyme-bonded concrete, scaled by ivy and climbing cacti. Various private roads led off the main track, looping around to gates.

For a moment Mark’s imagination painted over the image with the long straight driveways of the Highmarsh Valley branching off the main road. It was silent in the Chunatas, the noise of the megacity deflected by the foothills, a condition matching the land behind Randtown. Even the drab brown of the native plants was similar to the weak ocher shadings of boltgrass. But the air here was dryer, tinged with chemicals from the refinery sector sixteen kilometers away to the west. And Regulus was a too-bright point of blue-white light in the cloudless sky, still emitting a fierce heat in the late afternoon. Even in his daydreams, Mark could never pretend to reclaim all they’d lost. Fantasizing about it was stupid, the sign of a complete loser.

It was his fault. He’d taken his family to Elan. He’d built up their hopes. He’d shown them a decent, clean life. His dream had died in fire and pain. It was a knowledge that prevented him from sleeping every night. Self-recrimination that made it impossible to talk properly to Liz. Misery at having to bring his lovely children back to this vile world that held him back from playing with them.

He was so wrapped up in self-pity he almost missed the turn. A fast pull on the wheel sent the Lapanto skidding around the sharp bend and down the little trail. Dusty soil puffed up from the back wheels as they spun. “Idiot,” he told himself.

After a couple of hundred meters the trail ended at an iron gate in a wall of terracotta-red concrete. Mark’s e-butler gave the gates his code, and they swung open. There was an oasis of lush emerald grass inside the wall. At the center was a long lime-green bungalow with red composite roof panels molded to resemble clay tiles. Several gardening bots trundled about, tending to the lawns and herbaceous borders, keeping them as neat as the building they surrounded. Mark always enjoyed the view from here; with the bungalow perched halfway up the hill they could sit on the patio and look across New Costa’s urban expanse as it rolled away into the horizon. From this vantage point it never seemed quite so objectionable as when he was down among the factories and the strip malls. All very different from his old house in Santa Hydra.

Kyle, Mark’s brother, leased the bungalow from the Augusta Engineering Corp; he could afford to with his high-paying job at the StVincent Loan & Trust. Everybody in Mark’s immediate family had offered to put them up when they got back from Elan. He’d accepted Kyle’s offer because he couldn’t stand the thought of having to move in with Marty, his father. Besides, he’d always got on well with Kyle, who at least was sincere in wanting to help, and the kids really liked their uncle.

He braked the Lapanto on the drive outside the front door, and went inside. All the reception rooms had glass doors, allowing him to look along the hall to locate his small family. Nobody was in sight, but he heard happy shouting coming from the patio outside the main lounge. Both Sandy and Barry were in the pool, with a suspiciously wet Panda lying on the sun-soaked slabs beside the pool. The dog looked up at him, but didn’t move.