Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Who then?” Julia asked. “Who is it up to?”

Walshaw looked at Greg. “That’s you, Greg. If it’s to be done, it’s to be done properly. Would you interrogate him?”

Greg had seen it coming, ever since Gabriel blurted the idea of a snatch. It’d given him a few seconds to chew the proposition. He spread his palms wide. “Preparations wouldn’t hurt. Mind you, I’d be physically incapable of interrogating anyone for a couple of days anyway. That might give us enough time to analyse the Crays’ data. See if we can’t find some leads in them. Ellis should’ve left one.”

He noticed Julia’s face had gone blank, focusing inwards, Must be using her nodes, running their arguments through analysis, battling the pros and cons against each other, trying to reach the conclusions ahead of them. In a way it was a power similar to Gabriel’s.

“We’re going through the Crays now,” said Walshaw. “Although I don’t know what the hell you did to one of them, it crashed one of our lightware crunchers when we plugged it in, bloody thing is so much rubbish now. The other two Crays are clean, although it’ll take time to make sure there aren’t any concealed wipe instructions buried in them.”

“What have you got so far?” Greg asked.

“Ellis had quite an extraordinary accumulation of data, everything from minutely detailed personal dossiers through to industrial templates. Trivia and ultra-hush all jumbled together. It’s going to take some sifting, even with the light-ware crunchers hooked in.”

“What did you mean, Ellis should’ve left a lead?” Julia asked.

“Standard practice,” Greg explained. “If you’re plugging into those kind of deals you cover your back. Benign blackmail, to make sure your partners don’t get any funny ideas afterwards. There’ll be a record of all the burns he arranged as Wolf; money, clients, the names of his hotrod team; data he bought and sold as Medeor, names, companies. Every damning byte. And it’ll be somewhere where it can be found after he’s dead. In the Crays, the Hitachi terminal’s memory core, his cybofax, public data core on a time delay, hell, even an envelope left with a lawyer.”

“Nothing else?” Julia asked.

“Pardon?”

“You don’t think there’s anything else important in the Crays?”

For some reason her slightly querulous attitude made him aware of how immensely tired he was. He was travelling on buzz energy, had been for hours, and it was running out fast now they’d got Katerina back.

“I wouldn’t know. I expect they’re a goldmine of illegal circuit activity.”

“That’s all?” Julia was leaning forward, studying his face intently. He had the uncomfortable impression he was being judged. Crime unknown. And, frankly, he didn’t give a shit.

“All I can think of, yeah.”

Dr Taylor stepped out of the lift, accompanied by Victor who was carrying her case. She was a young woman wearing a plain cerise trouser suit, her dark hair French pleated. She had a quick word with Morgan Walshaw and went into his office. Julia started to follow, but the security chief laid a light restraining hand on her arm. For a moment she looked like she’d rebel, then nodded meekly. Victor closed the door softly after he’d gone through.

“Thank you for bringing Kats back to me, Greg,” Julia said, abruptly all humble contrition.

Greg gave up trying to find motives for her oscillating moods. She was on an emotional rollercoaster; depressed by Katerina, frightened by Kendric, trusting in him, Gabriel, and Walshaw to deliver her from evil. Poor kid.

“It hurts so much just seeing her,” Julia said. “Serves me right, I suppose.” She reached round her neck with both hands and unhooked a slim gold chain. “For you. From me. And you don’t even have to give me a kiss for it.” She favoured him with a sly weary smile.

It was a St Christopher pendant, solid gold.

“Well, put it on then,” Julia said.

He mimicked a grin, feeling itchy under Gabriel’s heartily bemused eye, and fastened it round his own neck. The little disk was warm on his skin as it slithered down beneath the open neck of his crisp dress shirt.

“To keep the demons at bay,” Julia said. “Even though you’re not a believer.”

Greg pulled out of the finance division’s nearly deserted car park, turning the Duo west on to the artificial lava surface of the A47. There was a single car in front of them. It wasn’t quite dawn. The gross Event Horizon sign splashed the surrounding land with a guttering medley of coloured light.

“I feel sorry for that girl, you know,” Gabriel said. She was looking out of the window at the clumps of hermes oak scrub along the side of the road. Beyond the bushes was a near vertical drop to the ruffled waters of the estuary. In the distance were the dark shapes of the hydro-turbine islands, moonglazed foam rumbling round them.

“Katerina? Who wouldn’t?” Greg said.

“No, Katerina is pure survivor breed. I meant Julia; she has no real family, few friends her own age. And you’re on the borderline yourself, now, despite her token of esteem.”

“How do you figure that?”

“If Ellis hasn’t left anything in the Crays, or whatever, about Kendric or the organizer, how do you think she’ll feel about you? You’ve managed to be right all the way so far. She trusts you because of that. Implicitly. Screw up now and it’ll all end in tears.”

“Not a chance. I know Ellis’s type down to his last chromosome. A hyper-worrier. He’s a little-man intermediary who’s lucked into a real super-rank underclass operation; elated and terrified all at once. He’ll have taken precautions. That means a way of pointing his finger from beyond the grave.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yep. Ellis’s major problem was that he never got round to telling his paymasters he was insured.” Greg slowed as the car in front turned off on to the sliproad for the bridge ahead, then accelerated again as the cutting walls rose on either side.

Gabriel said: ‘I still don’t think Ellis would take such-”

The front nearside tyre blew out.

The Duo veered violently to the left, straight towards the near vertical slope of the cutting. Greg saw sturdy grey-white saplings, impaled in the headlight beams, lurching towards him. The steering-wheel twisted, wrenching at his hands, nearly breaking his grip. He jerked it back as hard as he could, with little or no effect. The Duo’s three remaining tyres fought for traction on the coarse cellulose surface, It was slewing sideways, screeching hard. A flamboyant fan of orange sparks unfolded across the offside window. That alpine-steep incline was sliding across the windscreen, rushing up on the side of the Duo. Horribly close. They’d spun nearly full circle and Greg could feel the tilt beginning as the car began to turn turtle. Then there was a boneshaker impact, a damp thud, and they were disorientatingly, motionless. Silence crashed down.

Soon broken.

“Shitfire,” Gabriel yelped. She was staring wild-eyed out of the windscreen, drawing breath in juddering gulps. “I didn’t know!” She whipped round to look at him, frantic, frightened, entreating. Which was something he’d never ever seen in her before. And that alarmed him more than the blow-out.

“I didn’t know, Greg! There was nothing. Nothing, flick it! Do you understand?”

“Calm down.”

“Nothing!”

“So what! You’re tired, and I’m knackered. It’s only a bloody tyre gone pop, small wonder you didn’t see it. Non-event.” Even as he spoke he could feel some submerged memory struggling for recognition. Something about the tyre performance guarantee. Puncture proof? That bonded silicon rubber was tough stuff.

Thankfully, Gabriel subsided into a feverish silence; eyelids tightly shuttered, mind roaming ahead. Did she suffer visions of her gland pumping furiously? He’d never asked.