Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

He recognized the people coming in, the category, not the names. The type that used to pester him and Eleanor during the first years after their marriage. Anybody over twenty-eight had their facial structure frozen in time with annual trips to discreet clinics, until they reached fifty-five, then they were allowed to age with virile silver-haired dignity. Appearance wasn’t just important to them, it was everything.

He watched Julia make her entrance a quarter of an hour after the official start. The jockeying to greet her. One statuesque redhead beauty in a shimmering black dress quite deliberately screwed her stiletto heel into the foot of a rival to be sure of being on the front row as Julia walked by.

The faces blurred together. Beauty was a quality which ebbed when it became monotonous, and none of the women lacked it. He concentrated on the dresses, looking for blue.

“That’s her,” Rachel Griffith said,

Greg halted the memory playback. The girl had sharp cheekbones, broad, square shoulders held proud. Judging from her build she could have been a professional athlete, except… he stared at her. An indefinable quality. Something lacking, perhaps? Rachel was right, she was a pro.

Suzi whistled softly. “Some looker.”

Greg restarted the memory, and watched the girl walk down the lobby towards the ballroom. He stopped the memory again when she was just under the camera. The white flower box was clasped in her hand. “Bingo. Can you get me a better shot of her face?” he asked Claude Murtand.

“Certainly.” The security manager slid on to a chair beside Rachel. He checked the memory’s time display, and began to call up corresponding memories from the other lobby cameras. He found an image of the girl staring almost straight into one camera above the reception desk, and squirted it into André Dubaud’s cybofax. The Commissaire relayed it to the police headquarters central processor core.

“Two minutes,” he said proudly. “We’ll have her name for you.”

“The name on her passport,” Suzi said.

“Madame, nobody with a false passport enters Monaco.”

Greg reversed the memory, watching the girl walk backwards to the door, halted it. She seemed to be by herself. “Can I see the memory of the outside camera, a couple of minutes before she comes in, please?”

The girl was the only person to get out of a dark green Aston Martin.

André Dubaud’s cybofax bleeped. He began to read the data that flowed down the wafer’s little screen. “Charlotte Diane Fielder, aged twenty-four, an English citizen, resident in Austria. Occupation, art student”

Greg felt a grin tugging his face. Suzi was chortling.

“She checked in to the Celestious at four-thirty p.m. three days ago,” André Dubaud continued. “Then checked out at nine-forty p.m. the same evening.”

“What time did the Newfields ball end?” Greg asked.

“Julia packed up around one o’clock,” said Rachel. “It was still going strong then.”

“Most had left by four,” said Claude Murtand. “There was a party of about thirty who stayed on to have breakfast. That would be about seven o’clock.”

Greg closed his eyes, sorting out an order of questions. “André, would you find out if she’s still in Monaco for me, please?”

“Of course.” The Commissaire began to talk into his cybofax.

“Rachel, would you and Pearse review the lobby door camera memory for the rest of the night, please. I’d like to know what time Charlotte Fielder left the hotel. And whether she was alone.”

“Sure thing,” said Rachel.

“What about me?” said Suzi.

Greg grinned. “You come with me to the Celestious. Make sure I don’t get into any trouble.”

“Bollocks,” Suzi muttered.

André Dubaud slipped his cybofax into his top pocket. “Immigration have no record of Charlotte Fielder leaving the principality, so she’s still here,” he said firmly. “But there is no hotel registration in her name. That means she’s staying with a resident.”

Greg ordered his gland to secrete a dose of neurohormones, shutting off Claude Murtand’s office, the turbulent thought currents of nearby minds, concentrating inwards. It was his intuition he wanted; now he had a face and an identity to focus on, he could scratch round inside his cranium for a feeling, maybe even an angle on her current location.

But he didn’t get the certainty he wanted, not even a sense of mild expectancy, which he would’ve settled for; instead there was a cold emptiness. Charlotte Fielder wasn’t in Monaco, not even close.

Back in the Citroën, Greg used his cybofax to call Victor Tyo, and squirted Charlotte Fielder’s small file over to him.

“See what sort of profile you can build,” he said to the security chief. “She’s gone to ground somewhere. Be helpful to know friends and contacts. Her pimp too, if you can manage it.”

“You got it,” Victor said. “Is she still in Monaco, do you think?”

“Coxumissaire Dubaud believes she is.”

The cybofax screen had enough definition to show a frown wrinkling Victor’s forehead. “Oh. Right. Can you get me her credit card number?”

Greg looked across at André Dubaud, who was sitting on one of the fold down seats, his back to the driver. “Can we get that from the Celestious?”

“Yes.”

“Call you back,” Greg told Victor.

The Celestious had a faintly Bavarian appearance, a flat high front of some pale bluish stone, a tower at each corner. Windows and doors were highly polished red wood, with gleaming brass handles. The principality’s flag fluttered on a tall pole. Greg looked twice at that, there couldn’t be any wind under the dome, someone had tricked it out with wires and motors. Utterly pointless. He put his head down, and went through the rotating door. It was the politics of envy. Monaco was getting to him, he was finding fault in everything. Always a mistake, clouding judgement. Never would have happened in the old days.

There was a strong smell of leather in the lobby, the decor was subdued, dark wood furnishings and a claret carpet. Biolums were disguised as engraved glass bola wall fittings.

André Dubaud showed his police card to the receptionist and asked for the manager.

“You think she’s made a bolt for it?” Suzi asked Greg in a low voice.

“Yeah. She came here for one thing, delivering the flower to Julia. When that was over, her part in all this finished.”

“Snuffed?”

“Could be.” He scratched the back of his neck.

“But you don’t think so.”

“Not sure. My infamous intuition doesn’t say chasing her is a waste of time.”

“So how did she get out? This gold-plated rat hole is worse than a banana republic for security.”

“You’re the tekmerc, you tell me.”

“No. Seriously, Greg, I’d never take on a deal inside Monaco. Use hotrods to burn data cores in the finance sector, maybe, but only from outside terminals. It’s like Event Horizon; something you just have to learn to accept as untouchable.”

“I thought you left Event Horizon alone because Julia owned it.”

Suzi made a big show of shifting the weight round on her shoulder strap. “Yeah, well. That, and I’ve seen what’s left of people after our angel-face Victor has finished with them. Sometimes there’s enough to fill a whole eggcup.”

“He’s good, isn’t he? Julia and old Morgan Walshaw knew what they were doing giving him the job.”

“Too fucking true.”

“So you don’t reckon our Miss Fielder could get out on the quiet?”

“Put it this way, I’ve never heard of anyone else doing it. And I would’ve done. It’s the dome which is the problem. A one hundred percent physical barrier. The only holes are the official ones. Nobody needs to create smuggling routes into Monaco, see? Drugs aren’t illegal here. They actually have two pharmaceuticals licensed to produce narcotics. Any kind you want.”