Something Coming Through

12. Take Me To Your Leader

Mangala | 25 July

Skip said, ‘This guy is something else. Came up eight years ago, but before that spent two years fighting for his right to emigrate. The British authorities claimed that the company that bought his ticket was a front for, quote, “an extensive and ruthlessly violent criminal enterprise run by his family”. McBride took them all the way to the House of Lords and won.’

They were driving to Cal McBride’s house, Vic at the wheel, Skip in the passenger seat, reading the file that Alain had ported to his phone.

Saying, ‘He muscled into the local meq trade, was implicated in exporting the stuff back to the UK. Also murder, kidnapping, extortion, bribery of elected officials…He went down when an investigator posing as a visiting businesswoman got him to agree to smuggle Elder Culture artefacts back to Earth inside finished electronic goods.’

‘What Alain was bitching about,’ Vic said.

‘Yeah. It says here that the prosecutor used the arrest to go through his books, found evidence of money laundering, asked for thirty years concurrent. McBride’s lawyers argued entrapment, bargained the sentence down to five. He served less than two, got out six months ago.’

Vic said, ‘And you can bet he’s back to doing what he does.’

He was gripping the steering wheel with both hands, overtaking everything on the ring road. Swarms of mopeds, cars, trucks, a road train of five container units hauled by a big diesel rig with chromed exhausts, headlights and the spots above its high cab blazing. There was a faint pinkish tinge in the lower part of the sky. A thousand kilometres to the west, the dust storm was getting close to Idunn’s Valley. Farmers were rounding up livestock and shutting them in barns, harvesting crops and unripe fruit, wrapping trees in orchards and vines in vineyards in shrouds of bubblewrap, sheeting over greenhouses. There had been a piece about it on the TV news that morning.

Vic said, ‘You know the reason for the sting that wrecked Alain’s case? The Mayor was up for re-election and one of the supporters of his chief opponent was in McBride’s pocket. So the Mayor put pressure on the police commissioner to arrest McBride, hoping to smear his opponent. But McBride wouldn’t give up his friends, ate the prison sentence to keep his political influence. Remember that when you talk to him. He’s smart, and he has influence in high places.’

Skip said, ‘You know, I met him at a reception a few months back. I’d forgotten all about it until I saw his mug shot.’

‘This was when you were driving for the Mayor.’

‘It wasn’t just driving. I was part of the close-protection team, I had to stand with him at parties, official receptions. Any place public.’

‘The Mayor being such a popular, fun-loving guy.’

‘He was always straight with me. A regular bloke.’

‘Who needs a bunch of bodyguards in case one of his many enemies tries to take a pop at him.’

‘He knows he isn’t going to win the next election. He’s okay with it. Anyway, McBride was at this reception. One held by the British consul.’

‘McBride being a fine upstanding representative of everything that puts the great into Great Britain.’

‘There were all kinds of people there. Everyone in black tie or cocktail dresses. McBride shook hands with the Mayor. They exchanged a few words. He seemed to know a lot of people.’

‘We should keep this meeting nice and informal,’ Vic said. ‘A routine enquiry about where McBride was last night. He’ll want to know why. Tell him it’s about a suspected murder, but don’t give away any details. Don’t even mention Redway’s name. Save all that for the actual interrogation.’

‘I know how to handle a suspect,’ Skip said.

‘This is a murder investigation. A horse of another colour.’

‘Look, can I ask you a question?’

‘That’s why I’m here. To give you the benefit of my years of experience.’

‘Were you trying to hand off the case because you think I’m not up to it?’

‘Of course not. I was trying to do Alain a favour. You too, for that matter.’

Skip seemed to buy that. Or at least, he didn’t push it. He said, ‘Just to be clear, I should be the one asking the questions when we get into it with McBride.’

‘It’s your case, Investigator Gayle. Go to it.’

Cal McBride’s house was set in a green garden behind a perimeter wall, a low rambling building with a red-tile roof. A square tower at one corner rose three storeys to a crenellated top. A big flag divided diagonally between red and black flapped in the brisk wind up there.

‘I believe that’s the anarchist flag,’ Vic said. ‘Looks like your man likes to think of himself as a libertarian. The kind that doesn’t believe in the law until someone steals their shit, and then they can’t get enough of the police.’

He and Skip were waiting beside their car, at the arched gateway. No one had answered when Skip had buzzed the intercom at the locked gate; if anyone was inside they weren’t in a hurry to check them out.

‘It doesn’t look like anyone’s in,’ Skip said, after a couple of minutes.

‘A place like this, someone is always in, keeping watch. Why do you think he built that tower? Lean on the horn again. Or wait, let me try something else.’

Vic reached through the open window of the car and hit the switch that activated the siren and the lights. The noise echoing down the broad curved street where other big houses stood behind high walls or hedges. Bel Air, the residential quarter of Petra favoured by top UN officials, diplomats and business people. The Mayor had a house two streets over.

Someone came out of the house and walked along the drive. A short tubby man in jeans and a roll-neck sweater, squinting against the blue stutter of the car’s LEDs, asking — shouting — to please turn that fucking thing off, you’ve made your point.

Vic flicked the switch, walked up to the gate in the sudden silence. The man staring at him through the bars, saying, ‘You got a warrant?’

‘Why would we need a warrant? This is just a social call.’

‘I don’t let in any police without a warrant.’

‘David Carson,’ Skip said. He had put on his spex. ‘Aka Little Dave. Came up here five years ago, served six months for failing to do mandatory civil work on arrival, with an additional two months for three counts of burglary.’

The man spat between his feet. He had the truculent look of someone always ready to be disappointed by life. ‘You can’t walk down the fucking street without some cop glassing you and getting in your face.’

‘We aren’t here to talk about your misdemeanours,’ Skip said. ‘We want to talk to Cal McBride.’

‘He isn’t here.’

‘I’d like to check that for myself.’

‘I tell you he isn’t here, then he isn’t here.’

‘And when someone like you tells me that the sun is shining,’ Vic said, beginning to lose his patience, ‘I immediately phone the weather bureau, ask the chief meteorologist if that’s the case. So why don’t you open the gate.’

‘He isn’t here,’ the man, Little Dave, said. ‘Phone who you like, it won’t change things. And if you want to come in you need a warrant.’

They stood there with the bars of the gate between them, in the shadow of the tall archway.

Vic said, ‘Investigator Williams, would you mind giving me the warrant so I can show it to this man?’

They’d talked about how to do this on the way over.

‘Sure thing,’ Skip said, and handed over a sheet of blue paper folded three times.

Vic took a step closer to the gate, held up the folded paper, its edge just touching the bars, twitched it back when Little Dave snatched at it. The man lunged without thinking, and Vic dropped the folded sheet of paper — a crime-scene form — and grabbed his forefinger and bent it up.

Little Dave gasped, his face turned sideways and pressed against the bars.

‘Careful,’ Vic said, bending the finger a little more. ‘If you move the wrong way it might break. Now, how about opening the gate?’

‘Let me go, you fucker.’

‘After you open the gate.’

‘I can’t do it when you’ve got my fucking finger!’

Vic said, ‘You have a phone, don’t you? Call the man watching us through the security camera up there. Tell him to do it. Then you can take me to your leader.’

They walked up the drive, lawns and beds of heather and conifers on either side. Plants from Earth. Ferns growing in a wrinkled hump of native rock.

‘Must be a lot of work, keeping these alive,’ Vic said.

Little Dave didn’t answer. He was flexing his right hand, scowling.

‘Those floodlights, I suppose they keep things growing during the night-year,’ Vic said. ‘Places like this, they shine as bright as day then. But I’m wondering, what will happen to all this when the dust storm hits?’

Little Dave didn’t have an answer for that, either. They went up a broad fan of steps to the house and he pulled open the door, oak planks studded with iron bolts, and walked through without looking to see if the two policemen were following.

The hall was as big as a hotel foyer. Wooden crates lined along one wall. Canvas equipment bags and backpacks. Toolboxes and plastic cases. A thin snow of styrofoam packing chips on the red floor tiles.

‘Wait here,’ Little Dave said, and walked off towards an archway at the far end of the hall.

Vic surveyed the supplies. Sleeping bags, tents, boxes of freeze-dried ready meals. He pointed to the stencilling on a small plastic case, said, ‘Know what a pulsed field magnetometer does?’

Skip was looking at a rock spotlit on a pedestal in a recess. A skull-shaped lump of what looked like sandstone finely layered in muted yellows and oranges and greys, like a section through a book.

He said, ‘You reckon this is some kind of artefact?’

‘It’s from a Riverine B site,’ someone else said. A man about Skip’s age, dressed in a blue linen suit, standing in a doorway. ‘Not much left of it after a million years, of course. Mostly rust and carbon strands and what they call differentiated spherules. Perhaps it was once some kind of machine, but who really knows?’

He stepped forward. Tall and tanned, thinning black hair brushed back from a high forehead and caught in a ponytail. His glance sliding off Vic, fixing on Skip.

‘Do forgive the mess. We’re getting ready for a little expedition.’

Skip showed his badge to the man, and introduced Vic. ‘We want to speak to Cal McBride.’

‘I understand you have a warrant. Perhaps I could see it.’

Skip said, ‘And you are?’

‘Danny Drury.’

‘You work for Mr McBride?’

‘Mr McBride doesn’t live here any more.’

Skip glanced at Vic. They’d worked up a rough plan to deal with Cal McBride, but now he wasn’t sure what to do.

Vic said, ‘This is his house, isn’t it?’

‘I fear you’ve been misinformed.’

Drury’s smile projected the kind of arrogant superiority that irritated the fuck out of Vic. He wondered if Skip understood it — that there was a class of English people who never questioned their unearned privilege, believed that it was their God-given right to take the best jobs and all the rest of the good stuff. There had been several of them in the force, back in Birmingham. Straight out of Oxbridge into the promotional fast track.

It didn’t help that Drury was directing most of his attention to the only other white guy in the room.

Skip tried to recover the initiative. ‘You bought this house from Mr McBride?’

‘Not exactly. I suppose you could say I inherited it. A perk of the job.’

‘And your job is what, exactly?’

‘I’m the managing director of Sky Edge Holdings.’

Vic realised what had happened. What Alain fucking Boudin had done to them. He’d given his case file to Skip all right, but hadn’t bothered to tell them that it hadn’t been updated. A little fuck-you for trying to dump the whodunnit on him. Skip hadn’t checked because he didn’t know any better, and Vic hadn’t bothered to check either. Damn.

He said to Drury, ‘You took over McBride’s house and his business. What did he have to say about that?’

‘It is his family’s business. I run it on their behalf.’

‘And how is the meq trade, these days?’

‘Do you really expect me to answer that, investigator?’

‘I’m wondering if this “little expedition” of yours is all about hunting biochines.’

Drury inclined his head. ‘Is this an interrogation? Because if it is, perhaps I should call my lawyer.’

‘Routine questioning,’ Vic said. No point in telling this guy more than he needed to know. ‘When Mr McBride moved out, did he leave a forwarding address?’

‘You’ll probably find him at the folly he’s building near the old Westside fighting pit. Are we finished? Because I really am very busy.’

At the front door, Skip turned to Drury and said, ‘By the way, where were you last night?’

Drury didn’t even blink. ‘The Mayor’s Landing Day Ball at the Hilton. Quite an event. Everyone who is anyone was there. Good day, investigators.’

As they walked up the drive, Skip said, ‘He was ready for me to ask that, wasn’t he? I mean, he didn’t even ask me why I wanted to know.’

‘We’ll make a murder police of you yet, Investigator Williams.’

‘I guess I should have done my homework a little better.’

‘We both fucked up,’ Vic said, and meant it. ‘But it isn’t anything we can’t fix. Drury is an interesting character, isn’t he? That ponytail is straight out of central casting for film villains circa 1990.’

‘I can’t help wondering if he inherited the ray gun along with the house and the meq business.’

‘Something else to ask Cal McBride. I assume you still want to talk to him.’