Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Is this official, Greg?”

“Very.”

“In connection with the Kitchener murder?”

“What else?”

“All right, I’ll phone the lab.” The image blanked out.

“The first thing he’s going to do is phone the Home Office,” Eleanor said. “Find out if you’re still authorized to shove him around like that.”

“Yeah,” Greg mumbled. He patted the settee, and she came over.

“Second thoughts?” she asked. She sat with her legs up on the armrest cushions, back resting against his shoulder.

“Not just yet.” He put his arm around her. “You do realize we are basing all this on my one tenuous belief that there was some incident in Launde’s past. If it does turn out nothing happened, then all we’ve achieved is to bury Nicholas even further.”

“You really can’t remember what it was?”

“No. I’m even starting to question if I did remember anything. It seems so fragile. Maybe it’s me who’s suffering from transient global amnesia.”

“Not you, my love.”

“Thanks.” He tapped out a number on the cybofax, and squirted it at the flatscreen.

“Who are you calling now?”

“Julia. I want to make sure my Home Office authorization isn’t withdrawn. And then she can request a search through all the national and international commercial news libraries for me, going back say fifteen years just to be on the safe side. See if we can find out what happened at Launde that way.”

Eleanor giggled. “A search through fifteen years’ worth of every library’s news files?”

“No messing. She ain’t broke.”

“She will be after that.”

Julia knew she shouldn’t be feeling so exultant, it wasn’t gracious, but to hell with that for one long sweet moment. Things were coming together just dandy. Maybe people were right when they called her a manipulator.

She was sitting at the head of the table in Wilholm’s study. It was a wonderfully sunny Monday outside. For once the windows were wide open, letting her hear the sound of querulous birdsong, a muggy breeze stirring the loose ends of her hair. She wore a sleeveless champagne cotton blouse and a short aquamarine skirt, dangling her leather sandals right on the end of her toes.

There were twelve memox AV crystals lying on the glossy tabletop around her terminal, recordings of Jakki Coleman’s show going back six months. Event Horizon’s media research office had compiled them for her.

Caroline Rothman had delivered them that morning when she brought the usual stack of legal papers which required a signature. She hadn’t said anything as she put them down on the table, but she must have known what they contained. Julia guessed the entire headquarters building was chittering with delight over Jakki Coleman’s audacity, waiting for the inevitable counterstroke. This time they were going to be disappointed. It was too personal for threats of sanctions and financial blackmail screamed down the phone to the channel editor. This time she was going to be adult and subtle. But in the end there was going to be just as much blood spilt, and it wasn’t going to be hers. What better way to start the week?

Glowing with a strong amber hue in the middle of her terminal’s cube was Jakki Coleman’s bank statement. She could thank Royan for that, his patient tutoring had enabled her to worm her way round Lloyds-Tashoko’s guardian programs last night, splitting their memory cores wide open. Of course, it wasn’t every hacker who had exclusive access to top-grade Event Horizon lightware crunchers to assist in decrypting financial security algorithms. To each their own…

She hadn’t emptied the account, though, that was far too easy. Besides Lloyds-Tashoko would know it was a hotrod burn as soon as Jakki complained, the money would be refunded, another point added way down the decimals on everyone’s insurance premium. All she wanted was to look.

The figures burned with cold brilliance. The high-flying finances of a channel superstar laid bare.

Except we’re not quite so valuable to the channel after all, are we, Jakki darling? Not if that’s all they’re paying you.

Beside each transaction was the creditor’s code. A standard finance directory search would take care of that. Julia set it up, and watched identities wink into existence alongside the columns. She knew some of them, big-name companies, department stores, travel agencies, hotels; the rest, the unknowns, she plugged into another search program.

It was interesting to see what was there, and even more interesting to see what wasn’t. Jakki Coleman didn’t buy any clothes, not one single item in the last three years.

Julia clapped her hands in delight, and slotted the first memox AV into the player deck beside her terminal. Jakki Coleman, six months younger, but looking just as antique, smiled out of the flatscreen above the fireplace. She was wearing a black two-piece suit with a bold mauve and green jungle-print blouse.

“For that fuller figure,” Julia said to the flatscreen. She studied the style intently-the suit was either a Perain or a Halishan-and loaded a note into a node file, coded JakkiDeath. She moved on to the next show.

The last show the media office had recorded was the previous Friday’s. There was Jakki in a black and white classical suit with an oversize side-tie. And herself, in her purple blazer, and her long white skirt, and her straw boater, with her hair pleated into a long rope, walking along a line of fit young men in dark red swimming trunks, the team coach introducing her to each of them in turn. And afterwards, sitting at the side of the pool while the squad went through their training routine for her.

“Dear Julia seems to have regressed to her school uniform today,” Jakki said. “Now I remember why I was so eager to get out of mine after finishing lessons every afternoon.”

“To get on your back and earn some money?” Julia asked the image sweetly. She flicked the AV player deck off, and studied the results of JakkiDeath as they floated through her mind. She hadn’t been able to identify all the makes, of course, but approximately one-third of all the clothes Jakki wore on her show were by Esquiline. A lot of them even had the trim little gold intersecting ellipses emblem showing, a lapel pin, or the buttons.

Product placement. Jakki’s agent had done a deal with Esquiline.

She pulled a summary of the company from Event Horizon’s commercial intelligence division’s memory core. Esquiline was a relatively new style house, aiming to follow in the footsteps of Gucci, Armani, and Chanel; with shops in every major English city-two in Peterborough-and just starting to expand on to the Continent.

Julia got Caroline to place a call to Lavinia Mayer, Esquiline’s managing director, for her. My office calling your office was snooty enough to grab attention, and then there was the added weight of her name as well.

Lavinia Mayer was in her forties, wearing a lime-green jacket over a ruff-collar snow-white blouse. Her blonde hair was cut stylishly short. The office behind her was vaguely reminiscent of art deco, white and blue marble walls, building-block furniture. Impersonal, Julia thought.

“Miss Evans, I’m very honoured to have you call us.”

Julia decided on the idiot rich girl routine, wishing she had some bubble gum to chew just to complete the picture. “Yah, well, I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time.”

“No, not at all.”

“Oh, good, you see one of my friends was wearing this truly super dress the other day, and they said it was one of yours. So I was thinking, you’re a style house, do you by any chance supply whole wardrobes?”

Lavinia Mayer wasn’t the complete airhead her image suggested, there was no overt eagerness; oversell was always a tactical error. She did become very still, though. “We can certainly co-ordinate a client’s appearance for them, yes.”