Ричард Морган - The SF Collection

‘It’s asking a lot to believe that someone got in here, past all the security, broke into a safe only you and your wife had access to and murdered you, without causing any disturbance. You’re an intelligent man, you must have some reason for believing it.’

‘Oh, I do. Several.’

‘Reasons the police chose to ignore.’

‘Yes.’

I turned to face him. ‘All right. Let’s hear it.’

‘You’re looking at it, Mr Kovacs.’ He stood there in front of me. ‘I’m here. I’m back. You can’t kill me just by wiping out my cortical stack.’

‘You’ve got remote storage. Obviously, or you wouldn’t be here. How regular is the update?’

Bancroft smiled. ‘Every forty-eight hours.’ He tapped the back of his neck. ‘Direct needlecast from here into a shielded stack over at the PsychaSec installation at Alcatraz. I don’t even have to think about it.’

‘And they keep your clones on ice there as well.’

‘Yes. Multiple units.’

Guaranteed immortality. I sat there thinking about that for a while, wondering how I’d like it. Wondering if I’d like it.

‘Must be expensive,’ I said at last.

‘Not really. I own PsychaSec.’

‘Oh.’

‘So you see, Kovacs, neither I nor my wife could have pulled that trigger. We both knew it wouldn’t be enough to kill me. No matter how unlikely it seems, it had to be a stranger. Someone who didn’t know about the remote.’

I nodded. ‘All right, who else did know about it? Let’s narrow the field.’

‘Apart from my family?’ Bancroft shrugged. ‘My lawyer, Oumou Prescott. A couple of her legal aides. The director at PsychaSec. That’s about it.’

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘suicide is rarely a rational act.’

‘Yes, that’s what the police said. They used it to explain all the other minor inconveniences in their theory as well.’

‘Which were?’

This was what Bancroft had wanted to reveal earlier. It came out in a rush. ‘Which were that I should choose to walk the last two kilometres home, and let myself into the grounds on foot, then apparently readjust my internal clock before I killed myself.’

I blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘The police found traces of a cruiser landing in a field two kilometres from the perimeter of Suntouch House, which conveniently enough is just outside the pick-up range of the house security surveillance. Equally conveniently, there was apparently no satellite cover overhead at that precise time.’

‘Did they check taxi datastacks?’

Bancroft nodded. ‘For what it’s worth, they did, yes. West Coast law does not require taxi companies to keep records of their fleets’ whereabouts at any given time. Some of the more reputable firms do, of course, but there are others that don’t. Some even make a selling point of it. Client confidentiality, that sort of thing.’ A momentary hunted look crossed Bancroft’s face. ‘For some clients, in some cases, that would be a distinct advantage.’

‘Have you used these firms in the past?’

‘On occasion, yes.’

The logical next question hung in the air between us. I left it unasked, and waited. If Bancroft wasn’t going to share his reasons for wanting confidential transport, I wasn’t going to press him until I had a few other landmarks locked down.

Bancroft cleared his throat. ‘There is, in any case, some evidence to suggest that the vehicle in question might not have been a taxi. Field effect distribution, the police say. A pattern more in keeping with a larger vehicle.’

‘That depends on how hard it landed.’

‘I know. In any case, my tracks lead from the landing site, and apparently the condition of my shoes was in keeping with a two-kilometre trek across country. And then, finally, there was a call placed from this room shortly after three a.m. the night I was killed. A time check. There’s no voice on the line, only the sound of someone breathing.’

‘And the police know this too?’

‘Of course they do.’

‘How did they explain it?’

Bancroft smiled thinly. ‘They didn’t. They thought the solitary walk through the rain was very much in keeping with the act of suicide, and apparently they couldn’t see any inconsistency in a man wanting to check his internal chronochip before he blows his own head off. As you say, suicide is not a rational act. They have case histories of this sort of thing. Apparently, the world is full of incompetents who kill themselves and wake up in a new sleeve the next day. I’ve had it explained to me. They forget they’re wearing a stack, or it doesn’t seem important at the moment of the act. Our beloved medical welfare system brings them right back, suicide notes and requests notwithstanding. Curious abuse of rights, that. Is it the same system on Harlan’s World?’

I shrugged. ‘More or less. If the request is legally witnessed, then they have to let them go. Otherwise, failure to revive is a storage offence.’

‘I suppose that’s a wise precaution.’

‘Yes. It stops murderers passing their work off as suicide.’ Bancroft leaned forward on the rail and locked gazes with me. ‘Mr Kovacs, I am three hundred and fifty-seven years old. I have lived through a corporate war, the subsequent collapse of my industrial and trading interests, the real deaths of two of my children, at least three major economic crises, and I am still here. I am not the kind of man to take my own life, and even if I were, I would not have bungled it in this fashion. If it had been my intention to die, you would not be talking to me now. Is that clear?’

I looked back at him, back at those hard dark eyes. ‘Yes. Very clear.’

‘That’s good.’ He unpinned his stare. ‘Shall we continue?’

‘Yes. The police. They don’t like you very much, do they?’

Bancroft smiled without much humour. ‘The police and I have a perspective problem.’

‘Perspective?’

‘That’s right.’ He moved along the balcony. ‘Come here, I’ll show you what I mean.’

I followed him along the rail, catching the telescope with my arm as I did and knocking the barrel upright. The download shakes were beginning to demand their dues. The telescope’s positional motor whined crabbily and returned the instrument to its original shallow angle. Elevation and range focus ticked over on the ancient digital memory display. I paused to watch the thing realign itself. The fingermarks on the keypad were smudged in years of dust.

Bancroft had either not noticed my ineptitude or was being polite about it.

‘Yours?’ I asked him, jerking a thumb at the instrument. He glanced at it absently.

‘Once. It was an enthusiasm I had. Back when the stars were still something to stare at. You wouldn’t remember how that felt.’ It was said without conscious pretension or arrogance, almost inconsequentially. His voice lost some of its focus, like a transmission fading out. ‘Last time I looked through that lens was nearly two centuries ago. A lot of the Colony ships were still in flight then. We were still waiting to find out if they’d make it. Waiting for the needlebeams to come back to us. Like lighthouse beacons.’

He was losing me. I brought him back to reality. ‘Perspective?’ I reminded him gently.

‘Perspective.’ He nodded and swung an arm out over his property. ‘You see that tree. Just beyond the tennis courts.’

I could hardly miss it. A gnarled old monster taller than the house, casting shade over an area the size of a tennis court in itself. I nodded.

‘That tree is over seven hundred years old. When I bought this property, I hired a design engineer and he wanted to chop it down. He was planning to build the house further up the rise and the tree was spoiling the sea view. I sacked him.’