Frank Schätzing - Limit

Bruford stopped short. He suddenly felt deeply offended. With one leg already on the pavement, he leaned back in towards her.

‘Are you trying to threaten me?’

‘Now, you listen up, Sid—’

‘No, you listen up! My job has gone down the crapper. I’m trying to get what I can, but a deal is a deal! Is that clear? I may have a loose tongue, but that doesn’t mean I shit all over people. So kiss my ass and look after your own business.’

‘What a snitch,’ said the intern contemptuously as Bruford set off down the street without looking back at them. ‘For another hundred dollars he’d have flogged his own grandmother.’

Loreena watched him go.

‘No, he was right. We insulted him. If anyone behaved dubiously then it’s us.’

‘While we’re on the subject – shouldn’t we hand this footage over to the cops?’

Loreena hesitated. She hated the idea of doing something illegal, but she was a journalist, and journalists thrived on having a head start. Without giving an answer, she connected her computer to the in-car system. The Dodge she had rented at the airport had a large display.

‘Come up front,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a look at what good old Sid has to offer first.’

‘It’s a bit of a blind bargain.’

‘Sometimes you have to take risks.’

They saw a blurred panning shot, a crowd of people, food stalls, the headquarters of Imperial Oil, a podium. Then Bruford’s friends, grinning broadly into the camera. Bruford had been filming straight ahead initially, then he started to swivel round. Two young women came into shot, noticed that they were being filmed and started fooling around.

‘They’re having fun,’ laughed the intern. ‘Pretty hot, too. Especially the blonde.’

‘Hey, you’re supposed to be paying attention to the background.’

‘I can do both.’

‘Oh, sure. Men and multi-tasking.’

They fell silent. Bruford had used up a lot of memory space on the two backwater beauties’ performance, in the course of which several people walked into shot, three policemen appeared, two of them took off again, and one took up his post in the shadow of the building. The girls contorted themselves into a clumsy performance, the significance of which Loreena couldn’t decipher at first, until the intern whistled through his teeth.

‘Not bad at all! Do you recognise it?’

‘No.’

‘That’s from Alien Speedmaster 7 !’

‘From what?’

‘You don’t know Alien Speedmaster 7 ?’ His amazement seemed to know no bounds. ‘Don’t you ever go to the cinema?’

‘Yes, but it sounds like I see different films to you.’

‘Well, there’s a gap in your education there. Look what they’re doing now! I think they’re re-enacting the scene from Death Chat , you know the one, where those small, intelligent creatures go for the woman with the artificial arm and—’

‘No, I don’t know.’

The girls doubled up with laughter. This was disheartening. They had already looked at half of the material without seeing anything more than pubescent nonsense.

‘What are they doing now?’ puzzled the intern.

‘Would you just keep your eyes on the building?’

‘It looks like—’

‘ Please! ’

‘No, wait! I think that’s from the slushy love film that was hyped up so much last year. A bit cheesy if you ask me. That guy’s in it, that horny old man – you know the one. God, what’s his name? Tell me!’

‘Absolutely no idea.’

‘Yeah, the old bastard who recently got an honorary Oscar for his life’s work!’

‘Richard Gere?’

‘Yes, exactly! Gere! He plays the grandfather of—’

‘Shh!’ Loreena silenced him with a hand motion. ‘Look.’

From the side exit of the central building, two athletic-looking men in casual clothes came out, strolled over to the patrolling policeman and started speaking to him. Both were wearing sunglasses.

‘They don’t look like oil workers.’

‘No.’ Loreena leaned forward, wondering why she had a feeling of déjà vu. She played the section back again and again, zooming in on their faces. A moment later, a slim woman dressed in a trouser suit walked out of the building and positioned herself next to the entrance. The policeman pointed to something, the men looked in the direction of his outstretched hand, one of them holding something under his nose, which might have been a map of the city, and the conversation continued. In the background, a pot-bellied man with long black hair approached, wound his way towards the unguarded side entrance and shuffled inside.

‘Look at that,’ whispered Loreena.

A few moments later, the athletic-looking men shook the policeman’s hand and headed off. The woman in the trouser suit leaned against a tree, her arms folded, and then Bruford’s recording jumped. Sequences followed in which the girls continued to get up to mischief, without anything happening in the immediate vicinity of the building, then the crowd of people and the podium came into view. Both uniformed officials and civilians were pushing their way forward, everything was hectic. Images that had clearly been filmed right after the assassination attempt.

‘The guy that disappeared into the house—’ said the intern.

‘Could be anyone. The janitor, the engineer, some tramp.’ Loreena paused for breath. ‘But if not—’

‘Then we just saw the killer.’

‘Yes, the man who shot Gerald Palstein.’

They exchanged glances like two scientists who had just discovered an unknown, probably fatal virus and could see a Nobel Prize glimmering against the abyss of horror. Loreena isolated a freeze-frame of the fat man, enlarged it, connected her computer with the base station in Juneau and loaded the Magnifier, a program that could do wonders with even the grainiest of material. Within seconds, the blurred features became more contoured, strands of greasy hair separated from white skin, a straggly moustache corresponded with sparse chin stubble.

‘He looks Asian,’ said the intern.

Chinese, Loreena thought suddenly. China was involved in the Canadian oil-sand trade. Hadn’t they even acquired licences? On the other hand, what would the death of an EMCO manager change about the fact that Alberta was lost? Or was Imperial Oil in Chinese hands? But then EMCO would have belonged to them too. No, it didn’t make sense. And killing Palstein certainly didn’t. As he himself had said: Every unpopular decision I make reduces my popularity, but I’m really only the strategic leader.

She stroked her chin.

The sequence with the fat man alone was enough to justify a report, even if the guy turned out to be harmless. Yet it would make the police look a laughing stock. Greenwatch would have used up all its ammunition at once. A brief triumph that would cost them their decisive head-start in the investigations. The chance of solving the case by themselves would be blown.

Perhaps, thought Loreena, you should be content with what you have.

Indecisive, she rewound the film to the moment when the men with the sunglasses engaged the policeman in conversation. She zoomed in on them and let the Magnifier do its work, extracting details from the blurred image which, with all likelihood, came very close to their actual appearance. But even after that the policeman still looked unidentifiable, just an average policeman. The taller of the two men, however, looked familiar to her. Very familiar, in fact.

The computer informed her that the editorial office in Vancouver wanted to speak to her. The face of Sina, editor for Society and Miscellaneous, appeared on the display. ‘You wanted to know whether any other managerial figures from the oil trade have been injured since the beginning of the year.’