Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon

“Not at the moment, no.” One of Virginia Vidaura’s cardinal rules had always been find out the nature of your task before you choose your tools . That single sweep of charred stucco on Bancroft’s wall looked too elegant for this to be a shoot ‘em up carnival.

“Well.” Bancroft seemed almost perplexed by my response. He had been on the point of reaching into his shirt pocket, and now he completed the action, awkwardly. He held out an inscribed card to me. “This is my gunmaker. I’ve told them to expect you.”

I took the card and looked at it. The ornate script read Larkin & Green—Armourers since 2203 . Quaint. Below was a single string of numbers. I pocketed the card.

“This might be useful later on,” I admitted. “But for the moment I want to make a soft landing. Sit back and wait for the dust to settle. I think you can appreciate the need for that.”

“Yes, of course. Whatever you think best. I trust your judgement.” Bancroft caught my gaze and held it. “You’ll bear in mind the terms of our agreement, though. I am paying for a service. I don’t react well to abuse of trust, Mr. Kovacs.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” I said tiredly. I remembered the way Reileen Kawahara had dealt with two unfaithful minions. The animal sounds they had made came back to me in dreams for a long time afterwards. Reileen’s argument, framed as she peeled an apple against the backdrop of those screams, was that since no one really dies any more, punishment can only come through suffering. I felt my new face twitch, even now, with the memory. “For what it’s worth, the line the Corps fed you about me is so much shit on a prick. My word’s as good as it ever was.”

I stood up.

“Can you recommend a place to stay back in the city? Somewhere quiet, mid range.”

“Yes, there are places like that on Mission Street. I’ll have someone ferry you back there. Curtis, if he’s out of arrest by then.” Bancroft climbed to his feet as well. “I take it you intend to interview Miriam now. She really knows more about those last forty-eight hours than I do, so you’ll want to speak to her quite closely.”

I thought about those ancient eyes in that pneumatic teenager’s body and the idea of carrying on a conversation with Miriam Bancroft was suddenly repellent. At the same time a cold hand strummed taut chords in the pit of my stomach and the head of my penis swelled abruptly with blood. Classy.

“Oh, yes,” I said unenthusiastically. “I’d like to do that.”

“You seem ill at ease, Mr. Kovacs. Are you?”

I looked over my shoulder at the maid who had shown me in, then back at Miriam Bancroft. Their bodies were about the same age.

“No,” I said, more coarsely than I’d intended.

She briefly curved her mouth down at the corners and went back to rolling up the map she’d been studying when I arrived. Behind me the maid pulled the chart room door closed with a heavy click. Bancroft hadn’t seen fit to accompany me into the presence of his wife. Perhaps one encounter a day was as much as they allowed themselves. Instead, the maid had appeared as if by magic as we came down from the balcony in the seaward lounge. Bancroft paid her about as much attention as he had last time.

When I left, he was standing by the mirrorwood desk, staring at the blast mark on the wall.

Mrs. Bancroft deftly tightened the roll on the map in her hands and began to slide it into a long protective tube.

“Well,” she said, without looking up. “Ask me your questions, then.”

“Where were you when it happened?”

“I was in bed.” She looked up at me this time. “Please don’t ask me to corroborate that; I was alone.”

The chart room was long and airy under an arched roof that someone had tiled with illuminum. The map racks were waist high, each topped with a glassed-in display and set out in rows like exhibit cases in a museum. I moved out of the centre aisle, putting one of the racks between Mrs. Bancroft and myself. It felt a little like taking cover.

“Mrs. Bancroft, you seem to be under some misapprehension here. I’m not the police. I’m interested in information, not guilt.”

She slid the wrapped map into its holder and leaned back against the rack with both hands behind her. She had left her fresh young sweat and tennis clothes in some elegant bathroom while I was talking to her husband. Now she was immaculately fastened up in black slacks and something born of a union between a dinner jacket and a bodice. Her sleeves were pushed casually up almost to the elbow, her wrists unadorned with jewellery.

“Do I sound guilty, Mr. Kovacs?” she asked me.

“You seem overanxious to assert your fidelity to a complete stranger.”

She laughed. It was a pleasant, throaty sound and her shoulders rose and fell as she let it out. A laugh I could get to like.

“How very indirect you are.”

I looked down at the map displayed on the top of the rack in front of me. It was dated in the top left-hand corner, a year four centuries before I was born. The names marked on it were in a script I couldn’t read.

“Where I come from, directness is not considered a great virtue, Mrs. Bancroft.”

“No? Then what is?”

I shrugged. “Politeness. Control. Avoidance of embarrassment for all parties.”

“Sounds boring. I think you’re going to have a few shocks here, Mr. Kovacs.”

“I didn’t say I was a good citizen where I come from, Mrs. Bancroft.”

“Oh.” She pushed herself off the rack and moved towards me. “Yes, Laurens told me a little about you. It seems you’re thought of as a dangerous man on Harlan’s World.”

I shrugged again.

“It’s Russian.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The script.” She came round the rack and stood beside me, looking down at the map. “This is a Russian computer-generated chart of moon landing sites. Very rare. I got it at auction. Do you like it?”

“It’s very nice. What time did you go to sleep the night your husband was shot?”

She stared at me. “Early. I told you, I was alone.” She forced the edge out of her voice and her tone became almost light again. “Oh, and if that sounds like guilt, Mr. Kovacs, it’s not. It’s resignation. With a twist of bitterness.”

“You feel bitter about your husband?”

She smiled. “I thought I said resigned.”

“You said both.”

“Are you saying you think I killed my husband?”

“I don’t think anything yet. But it is a possibility.”

“Is it?”

“You had access to the safe. You were inside the house defences when it happened. And now it sounds as if you might have some emotional motives.”

Still smiling, she said, “Building a case, are we, Mr. Kovacs?”

I looked back at her. “If the heart pumps. Yeah.”

“The police had a similar theory for a while. They decided the heart didn’t pump. I’d prefer it if you didn’t smoke in here.”

I looked down at my hands and found they had quite unconsciously taken out Kristin Ortega’s cigarettes. I was in the middle of tapping one out of the pack. Nerves. Feeling oddly betrayed by my new sleeve, I put the packet away.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s a question of climate control. A lot of the maps in here are very sensitive to pollution. You couldn’t know.”

She somehow managed to make it sound as if only a complete moron wouldn’t have realised. I could feel my grip on the interview sliding out of sight.

“What made the police—”

“Ask them.” She turned her back and walked away from me as if making a decision. “How old are you, Mr. Kovacs?”

“Subjectively? Forty-one. The years on Harlan’s World are a little longer than here, but there isn’t much in it.”