Ivan Valkov sat across the interrogation table from Deverau. Seeing as he was about to be charged with everything from resisting arrest to hostage taking, he appeared remarkably relaxed. Which was more than could be said for his legal representative, who sat alongside him nervously fiddling with her suit or looking at notes on the tablet in front of her. She was either a newly appointed duty lawyer or someone with little experience of serious criminals.
Deverau liked to interview his suspects as soon as they were in custody. It gave them little time to think through their situation and decide what pathetic story they were going to trot out in their defense. But Ivan had broken his leg jumping from the window and had spent an hour in hospital getting his right fibula re-set.
Deverau had been in the same hospital getting his own injuries attended to. Ivan’s sharp kick to his side hadn’t broken any of Deverau’s ribs, fortunately, but they were severely bruised. It was his hands that Deverau was more worried about. Third degree burns had stripped the skin off the backs around the knuckles and he’d had to have artificial skin grafts on both of them. Bandages had been placed over the wounds which made his injuries look more dramatic than they actually were.
Jones had warned it would make him look weak in front of Ivan and allow their suspect to gloat at the damage he had done to his accuser. But Deverau didn’t care. Let him gloat. Ivan already hated him for being Earth-born. If displaying his injuries made his suspect feel superior to him, then it only gave him further to fall.
“I would like to thank you for making my job easier,” Deverau began.
He matched Ivan’s glare across the table. He was trying to play it cool, but Deverau suspected it wouldn’t take much to break that facade.
“I wish all my suspects recorded themselves committing the crime and released the footage to the public. It would save everyone so much time. Sergeant Jones, if you would.”
Jones responded by pulling up the footage and turning the tablet so it faced Ivan and his lawyer.
The footage showed Ivan pacing in front of the hovercams, ranting with zeal while innocent tourists watched, terrified, in the background. “Mars will not be dictated to. We will not be stepped upon. Earth has exploited Mars for too long. We need to be allowed to govern ourselves, to work for ourselves!”
Ivan adjusted himself in his chair in a seated version of a swagger. He seemed proud of himself, even in custody.
His lawyer sat prim in her seat. “My client does not deny that it is him in the footage. He was expressing a legitimate grievance.”
Deverau held up his hand for her to stop. “Save your mitigating arguments for the courtroom, counsellor.”
He resumed focus on Ivan. “Who paid you?”
A flicker of unease moved across Ivan’s face. Only for a split second and almost imperceptible, but it was enough for Deverau to know he was onto something.
“Getting hold of bullet-firing guns smuggled from Earth isn’t cheap,” continued Deverau. “As for getting into the Martian Tropics resort undetected without bribing anybody… well, let’s just say it’s highly unlikely. Not something you would expect from someone on a miner’s salary.”
“You underestimate how many people want to send a defiant message back to Earth,” Ivan replied.
“Really?” said Deverau. “What about the nice clothes hanging in your closet or the very expensive holographic unit in your apartment?”
“I saved up,” he said.
Deverau leaned forward and tried not to wince at the pain in his ribs. “Perhaps you don’t understand what you’re facing. As well as your actions at the Martian Tropics resort, you were seen handing out stolen food at the transport hub, which links you directly to the attack on Martian Rails. You even used mining explosives taken from your job, Ivan. I have run out of fingers and toes to count up how many years you are going to spend in jail.”
He paused to let the reality of it sink into Ivan’s mind. “Tell me who paid you,” Deverau demanded. “It’ll look good for you when the time comes for sentencing.”
Ivan sat defiantly in his chair and said nothing.
Deverau didn’t expect him to confess everything in the first interrogation. It was enough to plant the idea in his mind. A few more nights in a cell should give him time to think. Perhaps his nervous lawyer might persuade him to talk.
After the silence had become uncomfortable, Deverau waited a little longer for the discomfort to become palpable.
Then he changed tack.
“I have another piece of interesting footage to show you,” he said. “Sergeant Jones?”
Jones showed his tablet to Ivan and his lawyer a second time.
“It’s security footage from the twenty-fifth of June,” Jones explained. “It shows you taking something from an EcoLine research facility in Deimos City.”
As the footage played, Ivan leaned forward to take a closer look. Which was difficult because his leg was unable to bend in the cast under the table. He shook his head at the image of the man taking a rack of plants from a refrigeration unit.
“That’s the room where the experiment alleged to have caused the food crisis was kept,” said Deverau.
“That’s not me,” said Ivan.
“Really? Keep watching.”
Deverau scrutinized the real and present face of Ivan Volkov across the table as he watched the thief turning in the elevator to reveal his identity. When Ivan saw himself, his arrogance evaporated.
“That’s fake!” Ivan declared and jumped up from his chair so quickly the chair tipped over backwards. Hopping on his good leg, he pointed an accusing finger at Deverau.
“You’re not going to pin that on me!”
Jones called for backup on his WristTab.
The lawyer desperately failed to get her client to sit back down.
Deverau sat still, watching his suspect’s reactions unfold and made a mental note of every single one.
“I did the other stuff,” Ivan ranted. He returned to the table and jabbed his finger on the tablet. “Show the other stuff. I’m proud to have stood up for the rights of Mars-borns. But that?”
He tossed the tablet into the air and Jones had to duck to avoid being hit on the head before it clattered to the floor.
“You can’t pin the food crisis on me. I didn’t do it!”
Two uniformed officers rushed in and grabbed Ivan’s arms. Hobbled by the cast on his broken leg, he didn’t resist them physically, but kept shouting his innocence.
Deverau terminated the interview and turned away to hide his smile of satisfaction.
•••
The stinging pain in Deverau’s arms was getting worse and he would soon have to succumb to doctor’s orders and take the painkillers he had been prescribed. He willed himself to hold out a little longer. He needed to keep his mind sharp.
Sitting in the viewing room adjoining the interview suite, he again watched the footage Mel had sent him. He was so engrossed that he didn’t even look up when Jones came in.
“I thought you’d like to know,” said Jones. “Uniform found two smashed WristTabs near one of the hatches that leads into the maintenance area on the west side. The assumption is, they belonged to Mel Erdan and the gang member who ran off.”
“They ran off together?” said Deverau in surprise. “Any indication where they went?”
“By the time uniform got there, it was impossible to tell,” said Jones. “But they managed to get one of the WristTabs working – it’s linked to the account of a farm worker called Alex Pawlikiewicz.”
“If a farm worker was part of the gang, could that be how Ivan got the stolen experiment into the fields?” said Deverau.
“He’s only a general worker, but I suppose it’s possible,” said Jones. “I’ve put out an alert for his arrest.”
“Good.”
Deverau should have been pleased at the development, but he hadn’t stopped thinking about the footage which was still running on the screen. He watched, for the umpteenth time, the perpetrator turn to reveal Ivan’s face.
“Why would he deny it’s him?” said Deverau.
Jones leaned over to take a closer look. “Suspects deny crimes they obviously committed all the time.”
“I know that, but he admits everything else.”
“Maybe the footage really is fake.”
“Computer analysis says not,” said Deverau. “Even if we accept the possibility that Mel is clever enough to fake it so it fools the computer, how did she know to point the finger at the one man responsible for two of the biggest crimes on Mars over the last year?”
Jones thought about it for a moment. “It seems unlikely, I agree.”
Deverau watched the security footage reach the end of the loop and return to the point where Ivan entered the room with an empty bag. When he had interrogated Mel and later spoken to her on the train, he didn’t get the sense she was capable of a conspiracy of such magnitude. But if she hired Ivan to steal her experiment and use his contacts to get it into the farms, it wasn’t so much of a stretch to think she was behind the train raid as well.
He stopped the footage and brought up the text message which had accompanied it:
I didn’t cause the crops to die. This is proof someone stole my experiment. His name is Ivan. He is here.
– Dr Melanie Erdan
Deverau turned back to his sergeant. “She sent this message from a WristTab knowing we could trace it, then stayed around until we showed up. If Ivan hadn’t fired that shockdart, we would have arrested her. She must have known that.”
“I’m not saying I have all the answers, Dev.”
“Mmm.” Deverau parked that question in the corner of his mind.
“How are we getting on with tracing the money?” he asked.
“I found nothing untoward on Ivan’s account,” said Jones. “If he was getting paid, then it was through unofficial channels.”
“Keep looking,” said Deverau. “While you’re at it, check Mel’s financials.”
“Will do. It seems an unlikely pairing, though – a respected botanist and a mine worker more than ten years younger than her.”
“You’re backtracking on your own theory now?” Deverau teased.
“Well, I…”
Deverau smiled. “No, you’re right. None of this makes sense. Yet.”
He was still missing a key piece. Deverau knew, until he found that piece, the answers to all of his questions would remain elusive.