Charles Stross - Halting State

Hackman pauses for breath, pauses to collect himself: He’s red in the face and breathing deeply. You force yourself not to recoil. You’re used to MOPs venting at you, but what’s freakily weird about this time is that as far as Hackman is concerned, you’re just a bystander, a convenient audience for his theatre of hate. For a moment you wonder if he’s having a heart attack, or maybe an orgasm, but then he pulls together another of his slick smiles and aims it at you, and it’s Game On again, with the charm ray turned all the way up to eleven. “Obviously, I’d be overjoyed if you could find the weakest link here and nail their hide to the front door. If nothing else, it would get me off the hook with the bottom feeders. But I do not want you snooping around in a manner that… encourages them. They’re hostiles, and they don’t know anything that can contribute to your investigation; all they can do is smear shit on the walls and steal the carpet. Am I clear? ”

You stare at Hackman, taken aback by his ferocity. He’s still doing that shaky-trembly thing again; but it’s not anger that you can see in him now, it’s pure and simple hatred. The big man’s got his radge on, hasn’t he? Fascinating! Not to mention scary enough you’d be calling for backup if he was in the high street wearing a hoodie. Here in the executive office suite, and him wearing a suit, it’s only a bit less scary: But you know how to deal with this kind of customer, and anyhow, he’s not going to get violent at you , is he? Unlike 90 percent of the scum you get to deal with on the street, physical violence is the last thing you’re likely to encounter from Hackman. (Which only makes him all the more dangerous.) “You’ve been completely clear, sir. Thank you very much. If you don’t mind, I’m going to turn my mobile on again.” You reach up and hit the phone’s button. Stick that on the station evidence server and let Liz suck it. You smile at him reassuringly: “I’m here to help you , sir. You don’t need to worry about bystanders.” Then you back out of his office, very slowly, not taking your eyes off him, not giving him an opportunity to attack.

Okay, so you’re the designated Victim Liaison Officer for a corporation that’s been mugged. But what do you do when the CEO’s a psychopath who’s out for revenge?

You hear from Liz around five o’clock, just as you’re about to go off shift. “Can you drop in the station on your way home? Verity’s called a facial over the MacDonald business, and he wants your input.”

Typical, you think, but you swallow it: She’s the skipper, and you’ve got to admit, this business is turning into a real pile of shit. With blood on the carpet and a programmer who went missing right about the time his employer reported a multi-million-euro hit, things are not looking good; the pressure is going to be telling on Liz from Verity, if not the chief. It’s still just a missing person case leg-humping a white-collar fraud, but with the amount of money at stake (and the Sexy! New! Technology! angle), there’s going to be Media Attention landing on your collective ass real soon now, if it hasn’t already, and the chief constable takes a dim view of media whores who don’t deliver. So you drive over to Meadowplace Road and mooch into the conference room with its tatty wallpaper and ancient flickering fluorescent lights, by way of the coffee machine on the second floor.

Liz is sitting at the front of the table with an expression like someone peed in her miso soup. Jimmy the X-Ray Specs and Roger the Ram are gassing about the morning’s breaking and entering, while a whole bunch of heavy SOCOs are nattering over their notes and a couple more sergeants from X Division are trailing you in. One of them you recognize as one of the stand-offish suits who was up at the bunker the other morning. All told you’re out on a limb: You’re not normally involved in this kind of incident meeting, and indeed you’re one of only a couple of uniforms in the bunch. “Alright, folks, let’s get started,” Liz calls, just as the door opens and another suit walks in. “Sir, we were just getting started. Would you like a chair, or…?”

“No, you carry on,” says Chief Superintendent Verity, and you cringe slightly: He’s got a voice like a rat-tail rasp, and rumour says he’s not long for the shop, the lung cancer’s not responding to treatment very well. For him to have dragged himself out to this session suggests that arses are being well and truly kicked all the way up to the top in officer country, if not the Justice Ministry. Trust that bastard Hackman to have friends in Holyrood.

“Alright, everyone. I assume you all know what this is about. We started off with a white-collar crime, a CMA special, last Thursday at Hayek Associates over in Granton. A whole bunch of money went missing. We got the call by mistake—one of their managers panicked and dialled 211 instead of trying to shovel things under the rug, and I think there’s a story in that. But anyway, on Friday we discovered a member of staff wasn’t answering the phone. As of this morning, things get slightly worse insofar as we now have a missing person on our hands, with a bunch of evidence that points to it being murder: His flat’s been done over, there’re signs of a struggle, and I believe Bill has got something to tell us about his movements. Take it away, Bill.”

Bill stands up, shuffling his tablet and a bunch of papers in a conference portfolio. He’s one of the suits from the woodshed the other day: fortysomething, salt-and-pepper moustache, dour puss with lips like he’s bitten a lime expecting nothing better. “Aye, well. The subject, one Nigel MacDonald, has no previous. He came to our attention in the course of the ongoing investigation at Hayek Associates, who employ him as a programmer.” Which is a load of bollocks, if you’re to believe what Wayne and the others are pointedly not saying: It’s like describing a brain surgeon as a first-aider. But the evidence is there in cold figures on their payroll, and the way everyone at Hayek tenses up and goes close-mouthed when you ask how they’re going to fill his boots. “Mr. MacDonald works from home an awful lot, and nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him since last Wednesday. By which I mean nobody’s seen email or spoken to him on the phone.”

Bill unfolds a fat swatch of paper from his portfolio. “I ran a query through NCIS”—the National Criminal Information System, not yet disentangled from the English one, even after eight years of IT-mediated divorce proceedings—“and then when that came back empty, I asked for a banking trace. That’s empty, too. He hasna spent a cent since Wednesday except for direct debits on his bank account. So I applied to NIR for a transaction log. Mr. MacDonald hasna presented his ID card to an Authorized Agency”—one with a direct line to the National Identity Register—“in more than three years. In fact, he hasna ever been stopped and checked. He did use it to open bank and credit accounts when it was issued, and he used it to apply for the mortgage on his hoose, but aside from that he’s the regular Invisible Man. He doesna drive a car or own a bus pass, so there’s nothing to be done aboot his movements. I havena pulled the street cameras yet, but if we have tae do it, I wouldna bet on his mug showing up.” He stepped down from the podium, an expression of disgust on his face.

“Thank you, Bill,” Liz says drily. “Scene of Crime next. Dr. Tweed?”

The “doctor” isn’t medical; Tweed is a lab monster with a Ph.D. and a perpetual air of mild amusement. Inevitably, he wears a sports jacket in the offending fabric, complete with corduroy elbow patches. And unlike Bill, he feels no need to stand up or parade around the front of the room. “I’m glad you called me for this one, it makes a nice change from the usual ned domestics turned messy.” He fiddles for a moment with his laptop, then you see the entire back wall of the conference room vanish into CopSpace, replaced by a walk-through ludium—the entire scene digitized and uploaded into virtual reality.