Charles Stross - Halting State

“I don’t understand these folks’ tongue, Liz. They’re space aliens from the planet IT industry. Maybe someone from ICE can talk techie to them? It’s like the joke about the post-modernist gangster who makes you an offer ye canna understand. More to the point, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for, an’ that’s a wee bit of a handicap. I mean, with your average wee ned, it’s pretty clear what’s gan on, what mischief they’re up to, but this shower don’t tick like that. Can you not give me some guidance?”

Kavanaugh fixed you with a baby-blue gaze so pointed you could have booked her for carrying a sharpie: “You’re recording everything, aren’t you? I know you’re not a specialist. They know that, too. Just do the interviews, and someone who knows what to look for will go over them later. We’ll get a full gesture and voice stress breakdown, not just what they’re mouthing off, and if we’re lucky, someone will get over-confident and forget they’re not just talking to you. Understand? Once we know who’s not telling us everything, we can roll it up from there.”

You nodded. Not that understanding made it fun, but at least you weren’t wasting your time. “Okay, I got that. You figure it’s an inside job, and maybe we can flush our bird by playing dumb.”

“You mean, if it’s an inside job.” The inspector’s façade cracked for a moment: She looked tired. “Of course, it might not be. In which case we’re in a deep pile of dogshit, and it’s going to take SOCA to dig us out of it. Have you got everyone pencilled in on your list yet?”

You zoomed a GANT chart you’d been working on and zapped it in front of her: “I’ve not met this Nigel MacDonald yet. He wasn’t in yesterday, and he isn’t here today. Works from home, according to Richardson. Some kind of programmer. I phoned his number, but he isn’t answering.”

“Well. If I were you, I’d go round and bang on his door.” She grinned. “Rattle some cages. Within reason,” she added hastily.

Within reason.

Which was the rub: Way back when you were doing a social psych module for your degree in police studies, you went through a period when you used to try and nail every damn category of offender to one of the steps of Maslow’s pyramid of needs. Take your common-or-garden ned (or chav, if they’re from south of the border): You know what motivates them. It’s basic stuff, a couple of steps up the hierarchy—beer and sex, mostly, and maybe the need to have a bigger boom box in their tinny wee shitebox of a jacked-up hatchback. Fitba’s a bit too intellectual for that bunch, except for the tribal element. And neds are the bread and butter of community policing: domestics and public order offences and drugs plus the odd bit of petty theft. Pencil that in as physiological/safety stuff, with a dusting of sex on top. So you got a certain kind of crime that fit their needs, and a certain type of motivation, and figuring out how to join up the dots was mostly quite straightforward.

Whereas…

Where the hell did stock options fit in hierarchy theory? Or designing a better fire elemental? It was all right off the map, tap-dancing on the self-actualization pinnacle of the hierarchy. Your neds wanted to eat, get drunk, or fuck, and the bad things they could do were quite predictable—but the double-domes in the bunker were all at the top of the food-chain already—they either didn’t need or didn’t want that stuff. Forget boom boxes for the motor, half the staff drove Mercs or Maseratis, and the other half didn’t drive at all, probably thought it was a Crime against Gaia. What recondite shit could they get up to in pursuit of self-actualization? Especially in a business that made money, near as you can tell, by refereeing a game?

It’s enough to make an honest cop’s head hurt.

Being politely thick at the gearheads was getting to you, so after lunch you got in the car and trundled over to Mr. MacDonald’s house, which turned out to be a top-floor flat in Bruntsfield, just off the Links. Which would have made for a nice side trip, but by the time you’d found somewhere to park and then climbed four flights of stone steps—like most of Edinburgh, the tenement he’d chosen to live in predated the invention of the steam engine, never mind lifts—you were deeply unamused to find yourself facing a locked oak door with a discreetly reinforced frame and an unanswered doorbell.

Standing on the wicker door-mat, you speculated for a few moments: Maybe the sly bugger’s legged it to Dubai to spend his ill-gotten gains? (Assuming for a moment that the ill-gotten gains existed—you weren’t too clear on that.) You glanced up. There was the usual skylight over the stairwell, but you were buggered if you were about to go shinnying up on the roof, twenty metres up, just to try and sneak a peek through the shutters. If Liz wants me to break my neck, she can write me a memo. Instead, you put in a request for a UAV overflight and some pix: lowest priority so it wouldn’t come off your budget, just something to add to the task list of the next one of the force’s spy planes to overfly the neighbourhood. You tagged the flat as NOT RESPONSIVE TO OFFICER in CopSpace, time-stamped it, scribbled out a paper police access form, and jammed it through the letter-box, then headed back to the bunker, so you could spend the rest of your afternoon being talked down to by nerds.

At least you got Saturday and Sunday off for your sins.

Which brings you around to the here and now of Monday morning, and the team meeting Liz has called while you’re sipping your latte in Starbucks (as usual). Mac released you to her almost by return of IM, so now you’re stuck working with the old-school suits from X Division, not to mention a new boss who’s too smart by half. Wonderful …

“I think we’ve got preliminary coverage of all the parties on the scene of crime. Not that it makes much sense to talk about the scene as such, but Grant tells me the imaging is complete, so we’ve got an evidence sandbox with a complete snapshot of Hayek Associates’ IT set-up as of Thursday evening, with traffic inputs since then.” The inspector shrugs elegantly. You’re not sure whose office she’s sitting in with her cam, but it’s plusher than yours. “Now for the follow-up.” She pauses and looks straight at the phonecam, for all the world as if she’s reading from a teleprompter. “Mark, if I read my tea leaves correctly, we’re going to get a shitload of interested parties descending on the scene today, from insurers and underwriters on down. I want a complete visitor log and report on what they want with the target. Maybe we’ll get something back from shit-storm analysis this time.”

Mark—Sergeant Burroughs—grunts something semi-audible.

“Yes, I want a full background on everyone.” Kavanaugh raises her coffee mug (genuine ceramic, none of your recyclable cardboard nonsense). “You and Grant can go camp out in the bomb shelter this morning. I’ll be along later. Sergeant Smith.” (You stiffen unconsciously.) “It’s been forty-eight hours. Have we heard from your missing party?”

“No mam.” It’s out of your mouth before you realize it. “I emailed, phoned, IM’d, left a paper note, and banged on his door, if that’s what you’re asking. And I started the clock.”

“Well then.” She smiles. “He works from home, we have reason to believe he’s got material evidence relating to an ongoing investigation in his possession, and he isn’t answering the door after forty-eight hours. Meet me at the Meadowplace station in half an hour. It’s time to call in the ram team.”

Warrender Park Terrace. To your left, the Links, grassy meadow with cycle paths and ancient trees spreading their boughs over the parked cars. To your right, your typical Edinburgh tenement block; roughly carved stone blocks, rickety doors on the common stairwell shared by a dozen flats, and no sign of what’s going on behind those politely drawn slatted blinds and net curtains. It could conceal genteel working-class pensioner poverty, or a space-age bachelor pad. A loudly arguing family of five or a solitary bloater rotting in an armchair in front of a dusty TV.