Simon Green: Nightingale lament

If Walker and his people hadn't been there, the wed­ding party would have turned into a massacre. Both families went crazy, blaming each other. Somehow Walker kept the sides separated until they all left, swearing vengeance, then he organised a full investiga­tion, using all his considerable resources. He never found anything. There was no shortage of suspects, of people in both families who'd spoken out loudly against the wedding and the truce, but there was no proof, no evidence. Meanwhile, the two families fought running battles in the streets, mercilessly slaughtering anyone foolish enough to be caught out on their own. Finally, the Authorities stepped in and shut it down, threatening to banish both families from the Nightside. A slow, sullen armed truce prevailed, but only just. That was six years ago. Melinda and Quinn were cold in their separate family graves, and still no-one had any idea of the who or why of it. There are loads of con­spiracy theories, but then, there always are.

I would have done my best to find the killer, but shortly after the wedding my own life went to hell in a hurry, and I ended up running from the Nightside with Suzie Shooter's bullet in my back, vowing never to re­turn.

"Such a terrible tragedy," said Vincent. He picked up the photo and studied it. "I still miss them. Like part of me died with them. Sometimes I think I keep this photo on my desk as a reminder of the last time I was really happy." He put the photo down and smiled briefly at me. "I wish they could have seen this place. My great­est achievement. And now someone, or something, is trying to shut it down. Which is why I asked Walker to contact you, John. Can you help me?"

"Perhaps," I said. "I'm still trying to get a feel for what's going on here. Talk me through it, from the be­ginning."

Vincent leaned back in his manager's chair and linked his fingers together across his expansive waist­coat. While he talked, his voice was calm and even, but his gaze kept flickering to the CCTV monitors.

"It started two weeks ago, John. Everything normal, just another day. Until one of the main turbines sud­denly stopped working. My people investigated and found it had been sabotaged. Not a professional job - the whole interior had simply been ... ripped apart. My people repaired it and got it back online in under an hour, but by then systems were breaking down all through the plant. And that's been the pattern ever since. As fast as we fix things, something else goes wrong. It's costing us a fortune in spare parts alone. There's nothing sophisticated about the sabotage, just brutal, senseless destruction.

"No-one ever sees the saboteur. You've seen the se­curity I've hired, but they haven't made a blind bit of difference. I've got cameras everywhere, and they never see anything either. I've had the videotapes checked by experts, but there's no trace of anything. We can't even tell how the bastard gets in or out! The destruction's getting steadily worse. Repairs and recon­struction are starting to fall behind. It's only a matter of time before it starts affecting our power output. And a whole lot of people depend on the electricity we pro­duce here."

And if Prometheus Inc. goes down, so do you, I thought, but I was still being polite, so I didn't say it aloud.

"How about rivals?" I said. "Perhaps someone in the same line of business, looking to profit at your ex­pense?"

"There are always competitors," said Vincent, frowning. "But there's no-one else big enough to take over if we go under. Prometheus Inc. supplies 12.4 per cent of the Nightside's electricity needs. If we crash, there'll be power outages and brownouts all across the Nightside, and no-one wants that. The other companies would have to push themselves almost to destruction to take up the slack."

"All right," I said. "How about people who just don't like you? Made any new enemies recently?"

He smiled briefly. "A month ago, I would have said I didn't have an enemy in the world. But now . . ." He looked at the wedding photo on his desk again. "I've been having dreams . . . about Melinda and Quinn, and the day they died. And I have to wonder ... if the bas­tard who killed them is coming after me."

I hadn't seen that twist coming. "Why you? And why wait six years?"

"Maybe the killer thinks I know something, though I'm damned if I know what. And just maybe it's all started up again because you're back, John. An awful lot of old grudges and feuds have bubbled to the sur­face since you returned to the Nightside."

He had a point there, so I decided to change the subject. "Let's talk about the actual damage here. You said it was . . . unsophisticated."

"Hell yes," said Vincent. "It's clear the saboteur has no real technical knowledge. There are a dozen places he could have hit that would shut the whole plant down if they were even interfered with. But none a layman could hope to recognise. And, of course, there's the se­cret process at the heart of Prometheus Inc. that makes this whole operation possible. I invented it. But that's kept inside a steel vault, protected by state-of-the-art high-tech defence systems. Even the Authorities would have a hard time getting to it without the right pass codes." Vincent leaned forward across the desk and fixed me with a pleading gaze. "You've got to help me, John. It's not only my livelihood we're talking about here. If Prometheus Inc. is forced offline, and power levels drop all across the Nightside, people are going to start dying. Hundreds of thousands of lives could be at risk."

I should have seen what was coming. But I always was a sucker for a sob story.

Vincent took me on a tour through the plant, the under­ground section that outsiders never got a chance to see. It was all spotlessly clean and eerily quiet. The actual generators themselves turned out to be much smaller than I expected, and made hardly a sound. There were panels and gauges and readouts and any amount of gleaming high tech, none of which meant anything to me, though I was careful to make impressed sounds at regular intervals. Every bit of it had been designed by Vincent, back when he was the Mechanic, rather than the Manager. He kept up a running commentary throughout the tour, most of which went right over my head, while I nodded and smiled and kept an eye out for the saboteur. Eventually Vincent ran out of things to point at, and we stopped at the end of a cavernous hall, before a large, closed, solid steel door. He looked at me, clearly expecting me to say something.

"It's all ... very clean," I said. "And very impres­sive. Though it's hard to believe you produce so much of the Nightside's electricity with . . . just this. I was expecting something ten times the size."

Vincent grinned. "None of the power comes from this. All the machinery does is convert the power pro­duced in there into electricity. The secret lies in my own special process, behind this sealed door. A scien­tific marvel, if I do say so myself."

I glared suddenly at the steel door. "If you're about to tell me you've got a nuclear pile in there . . ."

"No, no . . ."

"Or a contained singularity . . ."

"Nothing so crude, John. My process is perfectly safe, with no noxious by-products. Though I'm afraid I can't show it to you. Some things have to remain se­cret."

And then he broke off, and we both looked round sharply as we heard something. A harsh juddering began in one of the machines at the far end of the hall, and black smoke billowed suddenly from a vent, before an alarm shrilled loudly and the machine shut itself down. Vincent shrank back against the steel door.

"He's here! The saboteur . . . he's never got this far before. He must have been following us all this time . . . Are you armed, John?"

"I don't use guns," I said. "I've never felt the need."