TIA GIVES A status update, telling me the live feed was cut off at the source and that it’s trying to reestablish contact. The little red dot has disappeared from the map too.
Was permission withdrawn?
No. Data cut off at source.
Fuck.
I abandon the rest of the coffee and run out, crossing the street to sprint to the other place. I should have expected this. I’ve grown complacent, having Tia; I should have guessed that the journo would have some sort of privacy tech and that Sondra’s APA wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. But this is more than that: from the way the feed just cut, it suggests Delaney didn’t ask permission to interfere with Sondra’s chip. Regardless of what ze says to her about information on the hotel and the police, I can see another case building, one involving illegal overriding of permissions and data-upload prevention.
As I push past a man walking his dog and somehow taking up most of the pavement in the process, I get Tia to contact the owner of the second café, a standard warning that I’m about to enter the premises, as I believe a crime is in progress, and that they are not to interfere in any way nor notify any of the patrons. The days of flashing an ID card are long gone.
The café is fairly busy, much more so than the one I was just in, with a woman behind the counter staring at me, pale faced and shaking.
“I’m going upstairs,” I say to her. “Don’t let anyone else go up there. Is there a kitchen next to the private-hire room?”
She nods. “I didn’t know anything was—”
I’m already heading for the stairs at the back of the room, my profile still set to private, leaving Tia to gather the standard commitment allowing anything discovered on the premises to be recorded and potentially reviewed by the MoJ, including the exchange I just had with her. By the time I’m halfway up the stairs, the owner has granted all permissions and added a personal note stating she’ll do anything to help.
I pause to take off my shoes and carry them up the rest of the stairs with me. The door to the private room is shut, as expected, and I see another door to the right, farther along the landing. The air is stale and laced with a musky perfume. There’s a cord with a Staff Only sign hanging from it strung across the landing, which I step over as silently as I can. The carpet out here looks new and I wonder if the floorboards have just been renovated, as, mercifully, not one of them squeaks. I can hear a conversation taking place but not clearly enough, and I daren’t go right up to the door and press my ear against it. I need to hear hir offer Sondra the bribe, just to really make sure ze is screwed.
The door to the kitchen creaks quietly as I open it, so I make a gap just big enough for me to slip inside and leave it ajar behind me. It’s a small kitchen containing a sink, ancient microwave with a film of dust on it and a kettle that isn’t even plugged in. Boxes of protein tubes, vegetable oil and chemicals for the food-and-drink printer are stacked high and I have to squeeze past them to get to the hatch. I manage to make it to a cramped nook with just the thin wooden hatch doors between me and what I hope is a crime in progress. The voices are easier to hear now, Sondra’s high and reedy with stress, Delaney’s reminiscent of a male contralto and pleasant to listen to. It sounds like Sondra is telling hir about what she does in the kitchen at the hotel. At least she’s remembered my instructions to answer any questions about her job that she would feel happy talking to anyone about. I had a feeling the journo would start gently, not going straight into the deal without trying to put her at ease and taking the opportunity to gather any background too.
“There aren’t many places that give you the chance to learn that kind of stuff,” Sondra is saying.
“It’s nice to see someone passionate about their work.”
I start recording, wishing I could add a visual to it more useful than a glorified storage cupboard, but it’ll have to do. A message pops up from Tia.
Unable to record. Running diagnostics. Diagnostics inconclusive. Unable to connect to cloud for further guidance.
Shit. Whatever Delaney is using has an area effect, something good enough to bugger Tia up, which is worrying.
“I’m so glad you decided to meet me,” Delaney says, and I focus back on the conversation.
“You said it would be worth it.”
“Do you play games, Sondra?”
Sondra hesitates. “What kind of games?”
“RPGs? MM mersives? Or do you love solo shooters?”
“Oh! Yeah, course I do. I like racing games, not shooters. What’s that got to do with this?”
“Don’t be so nervous! You’ve gone so red!”
“My boss . . .”
A chair creaks and Delaney lowers hir voice. “Don’t worry about that now. She isn’t here. If you tell me what’s been going on at the hotel—why the police are there and if it has something to do with one of your . . . high-profile guests—I’ll give you a dedicated server space that will be yours for the rest of your life. Full privacy, no ads, any game you want.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I’ve heard that bribe before.
There’s a long pause. Sondra is probably wondering why I haven’t sent any messages since Delaney arrived and doesn’t know how to respond. I doubt her chip even knows it’s been cut off.
“Haven’t you got to say anything about my offer?”
“I need to think about it. I feel a bit sick. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“There’s no way anyone will find out it came from you,” Delaney says. “I just need to know if something has happened to Alejandro Casales.”
“Um . . . who?”
Her ignorance isn’t convincing. I make my way back to the kitchen door.
“You know who he is. Look, as soon as the police leave it’ll be all over the streams. Telling me a few hours before then doesn’t make any difference to anyone else. You won’t be breaking the law just by telling me if Casales is the reason the police are at the hotel. And you’ll be able to play any racing games you like, ad free, years before you’d be able to afford that level of privacy.”
I put on my shoes and without giving any fucks about being heard, leave the kitchen, jump over the cord and go into the private-hire room.
Sondra jumps out of her chair and hurries over to me. “Can I go now? I’m going to be sick.”
I nod and she runs out of the room, leaving Delaney in the second chair. I shut the door behind me and go and take Sondra’s place.
Delaney has shoulder-length brown hair, large brown eyes made striking with a hint of makeup and high cheekbones. There’s a dusting of stubble on hir chin and a thin sheen of sweat erupting on hir forehead. “SDCI Moreno, I presume.”
“Whatever you’re running to block recording, you need to turn it off.”
“They said you were good. I didn’t realize how good.” Ze seems preternaturally calm.
“Stop fucking with me and turn it off, or I will haul you in to the MoJ and they can crack your skull and pull your chip for me instead.”
“I was hoping to have a conversation about Alejandro Casales with you. I would much rather have it in private. If you ever cared about him, you’ll want it to be private too.”
This is not how I expected it to go and it gives me pause. Most people caught using illegal privacy tech would be shivering with fear by this point. I fold my arms. “If you’re thinking that I don’t have any proof of your actions here today, you should be aware that eyewitness testimony from an MoJ employee of my pay grade is held as fully admissible without any corroborating recordings or—”
“I know the law. Sir. Give me five minutes, please. Then you can do whatever you want to do with me and we’ll leave it in the lap of the lawyers.”
Leaning back in my chair, I consider the options and decide I have nothing to lose. I’m already skating on the edge of my remit and, strictly speaking, should be reporting to Milsom. But I don’t want to be pulled back to London before I have a chance to have a late lunch at the hotel. And I’m intrigued. “All right. Five minutes.”
“Is Alejandro Casales dead?”
Images hit me in staccato, of him writing the suicide note, of him testing the knot, of those spasmodic jerks as life was choked from his body. A surge of unfocused anger at being reminded when I only came here to finally get one of these fucking journos back for all the years of harassment makes me want to punch hir. “I can’t believe this, I—”
“Because if he is, it hasn’t got anything to do with whatever the Americans are saying. Or the Europeans, for that matter.”
The anger subsides and with one deep breath it’s back under control again. “I’m listening.”
“If I tell you this, I’m putting myself at huge personal risk. I’d like some sort of guarantee this won’t go further than us.”
I shake my head. “You can’t play the ‘protect me for some nebulous reason’ card and the ‘illegal privacy tech that protects you right now’ card in the same round, I’m afraid. That’s not how this game works.”
Ze looks down at the table, hir lashes long and dark against hir cheeks. “I don’t think you’re involved. I can’t find any other connection between him and you apart from when you were a child at the Circle. But the Ministry of Justice brought you in specifically, so there might be something I’ve missed.”
“Oh for the sake of fuck, Delaney. I haven’t got all day.”
“Alejandro Casales didn’t come to Norope to schmooze wealthy nutjobs into donating their money to the Circle. I’ll tell you why he went to London specifically, if you agree to overlook what happened here today.”
I laugh without mirth. “You are fucking joking. You know, I think it’ll just be easier to deliver you to the MoJ, get them to extract the data while they’re investigating that tech of yours. You’ll lose your journalism license, of course, and get busted down about twenty pay grades, but maybe you’ll be able to find a job shoveling sh—”
“Casales paid five hundred thousand pounds to a criminal organization I’ve been investigating for the last year to get illegally chipped. That’s what he was doing in London.”
I am reduced to staring at hir. It’s such an outlandish thing to claim, such a ridiculous thing to say about Alejandro that all I can think is that it’s true. Delaney certainly believes it, and there are a million better lies to tell about a man who thought personal chips were the worst invention since the atom bomb.
And then I remember what Selina said about him once he returned from London. How distant he was. That he complained of headaches. It’s a common side effect in those chipped late. Too much concentration to cope with in the early days. I experienced it myself—I should have recognized it! It just never even occurred to me that he could be chipped. That was sloppy.
“That criminal organization has ties to someone very high up in the Ministry of Justice,” Delaney continues. “That’s why I’m nervous about telling you. But if you’re as clean as your professional record suggests, I would keep this information out of your case file.”
“That’s why you wanted to speak to me about Casales?”
Ze nods. “I wanted to see if there was anything you could tell me about the Circle to explain why he’d do this. I don’t know how he got in touch with the crim-org or how he even knew they existed.”
“I haven’t been a member of the Circle for more than twenty years.”
“Yes, true. But you’re the only person who’s managed to leave it in that time too.” Hir eyes look back up at me and the desire to ask more questions about me plays across hir face before ze straightens up, refocusing. “Have the Americans killed him?”
“I can’t discuss the details of this case.”
“But he’s dead, isn’t he?”
I give the slightest nod. “Why do you think the Americans would want him dead?”
“He fell out with them. With the parent gov-corp, this is. He wasn’t getting on too well with Europe either. That’s why he had to go to London. The crim-org he paid is one of the very few that have no ties outside of Norope.”
“I want some names.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Seriously, don’t fuck with me on this.”
Ze laughs. “No, really, I’m working for someone on a far higher pay grade than your commissioner, and they won’t appreciate the time and paperwork involved with telling the Ministry to fuck off out of this. Casales is just one of hundreds who’ve bought this crim-org’s services. I know that they definitely aren’t the ones who killed him.”
“So this was just a loose end for you?”
“Sort of. The day after they chipped him, the place that did it was torched and the one who chipped Casales was killed. Needless to say the data trail was wiped clean too.”
“And you think it was the Americans who did that?”
“I know it was. They sent one of their best to tail him. She gets the job done.”
I wonder if he means the woman I saw in the spy-cam footage. “Short woman, very petite?”
Ze nods. “So she did it?” Ze looks away, shaking hir head. “What a waste. Will you be going to the States to pursue this?” Before I have a chance to answer, ze holds up a hand. “No, forget I asked that. You can’t talk about the case and, besides, what’s the point? If it goes that high Stateside it’s case closed, isn’t it? Fuck.”
It feels like ze is ten steps ahead in a thread of this investigation that I haven’t even had a chance to start yet. And I’m never going to get to start it. But the Americans didn’t kill Alejandro. He did it himself.
“Do you know why Alejandro and the US parent gov-corp fell out?”
Delaney shakes hir head. “I would dearly love to. All I know is that the Europeans were hoping to take advantage of it. They were courting him at the Moor Hotel—you must know about that.”
Not as much as you do, I think. Time to blag. “We know about the Gabor connection too.”
Delaney’s upper lip curls. “That toad has his fat fingers in far too many pies, particularly European ones. If it wasn’t for his bit of fluff, he’d live over there—I’m sure of it. No wonder the Americans killed Casales. Better than him defecting to Europe and getting into bed with Gabor.”
It feels like I’m sitting on top of an iceberg, having sketched out the top and pretty damn proud of myself for managing to draw a hidden crevasse or two, when all along there’s far, far more hidden beneath the waterline.
“This illegal chipping operation,” I say, resting my elbows on the table. “Do they provide cloud storage too?”
Delaney nods. “Of course. They hack your transaction history to make it look like you’re having a great time in London while you’re having the op, and once it’s done they give you cloud storage and however many online pseudonyms you’re willing to pay for. It’s a great service, if you don’t mind funding worse crimes and being vulnerable to their hacks, that is.”
“I’d be willing to overlook today if you gave me a lead to where their cloud servers are based.”
“If you’re looking for Alejandro’s data, don’t bother. The server was in the building the Yanks torched.”
I frown. I know enough to never take journalists at their word. Does ze have access to it? But if that’s the case, why sniff around down in Devon when the answers would be in his data anyway?
“How long ago did the arson take place?”
“It was Sunday afternoon. You can check with the local police. It was a warehouse in Wandsworth. The official line is that it was an illegal porn company making hardcore mersives involving some dodgy stuff. That way it’s perfectly reasonable that there won’t be gigs of online complaints about loss of service. No one would admit to losing access to Sexy Goat Farm Three or whatever.”
If ze is telling the truth and Alejandro did get chipped, whatever he uploaded to the cloud has to be out there somewhere, even if the server running his cloud storage was destroyed. No one runs cloud storage off just one hardware network.
“I need some names, Mir Delaney.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. But how about this: you forget about today, and then I’ll owe you one.”
I arch my eyebrow into as sardonic a statement as possible.
“Believe me,” Delaney says with a wide smile that reveals even, white teeth. “When you’re elbow deep in an investigation that’s going to flick the balls of America’s best assassin, the European oligarchs, Gabor and potentially Norope’s most dangerous crim-org, you may well need to call in this favor.”
If hir boss is higher than the commissioner, that may well be true. I have the sneaking suspicion the privacy tech ze is using may be something known to higher-ups who are turning a blind eye. “Tell me which member of staff told you something was going on at the hotel and you’ve got a deal.”
Delaney laughs. “A contact overheard a conversation between two local bobbies having a cuppa downstairs a couple of days ago. Tell Nadia Patel that her little empire remains intact.”
I stand. “All right. It’s a deal.”
Delaney flops back in the chair with relief as I head for the door. “Oh, Mr. Moreno, there is one question I’d like to ask you.”
If you ask me what it feels like to be left behind by Atlas, I’ll fucking bust your ass, I think as I turn to face hir.
“Is the food at the Moor Hotel as good as they say it is?”
“Better,” I say, and leave. Once I’ve reassured the café owner and gone outside, I ping Dee. I feel bad that I never got round to messaging her before I need her. I expect her to ignore me, but she responds straightaway.
Carl! Am I forgiven?
If you tell me about the journo who set up that shit show you put me through.
A pause. You should’ve said yes.
Dee, seriously, I need to know right now.
Some neuter called Naal Delaney.
And when did ze get in touch with you?
The day before our last game session together. It wasn’t some epic conspiracy. Ze sent me a message, totally out of the blue. We had a coffee together. I only agreed to meet hir because I thought ze wanted to talk about this new show they’re launching on the network, and I realized, like, five minutes in that I was so totally fucking wrong. When I started to leave ze said I could have this server space if I pulled you into a game and got you to agree to an interview. I said you’d never agree but ze said I’d have the space for a year just for trying.
You sold me out.
It was a really shitty thing to do, I know. I just . . . I really wanted my own space. No one watching. You know what that’s like, Carl. Look, if I could go back to a save point and play it through again, I’d do it totally differently.
Oh, really?
Yeah. On a second play through I’d have told you about it straight up, and cooked something up with you so you’d agree to the interview and just give him a gig of shit. Then we’d both have the server space and zero guilt.
I can’t help but smile at that. I should have listened to her instead of treating her like the rest of the assholes. She’s not like them. Fuck knows where I’d be without her. K, Dee. Next time I have a free hour I’ll ping you and we’ll go back to Mars.
Fuck, yeah! Later x
I’ve always told myself I don’t need anyone else and yet something inside me eases. That bond between us means more to me than . . . than anything else I can think of. And now I can trust her again, it’s like I have a safety net once more, or perhaps a touchstone, freeing me up fully to pursue the case.
My stomach rumbles as I reach the car. For someone prepared to offer that information, Delaney didn’t ask many questions. I get inside, glad for the silence and solitude but still feeling like there is far more here than I’m aware of.
Worried the gap in the constant background recording the MoJ expects from Tia will raise difficult questions, I check to see if there’s any escalation from the MoJ AI, only to find that Tia didn’t even report it. According to the logs, there was no interruption, as if I’d stayed in that pokey kitchen for the duration of the conversation and then left. JeeMuh. Whatever Delaney uses is better than any other illegal blocking software I know of. Ze could have killed me and nothing would have been flagged up until I didn’t report in.
Was Alejandro really chipped? I put in a call to Linda, hoping she won’t mind being disturbed at the lab. She accepts voice contact straightaway.
“I’ve finished the PM on Casales,” she says. “I was just starting on Buckingham. Did you need something?”
“I was wondering if Casales was chipped.”
“No sign of that,” she says cheerily. “Not a sausage. Why’d you ask? I thought his cult was famously antitech?”
“Just checking,” I say, and start the car. It’s only when I’m two miles out of town that I remember I was supposed to take Sondra back to the hotel with me.