The relentless percussion of the rain on the car window only served to sour Peacekeeper Imran Jai's already foul mood. He sat hunched with his head in his hands, shielding his face from the oppressive grey sky that hung morbidly overhead. The sky, like everything else that morning, was mocking him, making him feel like the butt of some cosmic joke. A toxic tasting acrid layer coated his tongue like stubborn frost. This combined with a rhythmic throb in his head that coincided with his heartbeat, drumming out a malicious tune: Never again, never again, never again.
The drinker’s refrain was playing in an infernally arresting loop inside Imran Jai’s head. It was as constant as the rain that assaulted the car’s window. Screwing his eyes shut Jai was treated to a stilted slideshow of scenes from last night, events unconnected by a coherent chronology but popping into his memory like swamp gas bubbling up to the surface of some foul wasteland. His stomach too was bubbling, signalled audibly by a wet fart. Thankfully Jai was alone in the car; there was no dissenting nose to add to his woes. It was too early this morning for him, too soon to be out of bed, not enough time had elapsed for him to perform the mental housekeeping required for this shit. Last night was a blur, a smashed mosaic that was no longer discernible as a whole. Instead Jai could only guess at what the shattered picture was by trying to piece together the fragments he had with forensic care. Not easy when hungover and saturated with guilt. Because of course something had happened last night. He wasn’t just guilty of being hungover; something he had practice with in recent years. In Jai’s mind there was a fragment of memory, a sharp splinter of glass, too painful to grasp tightly. And the guilt; lurking in the background with all the intent of a mugger. He had said something, something stupid to dear friend, he was certain.
Never again Imran, never again.
Jai forced his eyes closed as tight as they would go, inducing discomfort and a frenzied kaleidoscope of painful patterns behind his eyelids. Perhaps by sheer force of will he could shift his headache, expel his gastric agony and purge the guilt from his mind in one extraordinary feat of will. Eyes screwed airtight shut he tried. But to no avail.
Can the day get any worse?
The first portent that it could was the hard wrapping of soft knuckles on the car door window.
‘Jai, we’re cleared to go down, get your stuff together, c’mon.'
Imran Jai sighed and opened the car door, almost hitting fellow Peacekeeper Erland Johansson in the face as the sleek gullwing fluidly glided up.
‘Hey, watch what you’re doing!’ protested Johansson as he leaped back theatrically. Imran Jai flopped out of the car like a stroppy teen, his body language giving no indication that he wanted to be here. And why would he? The rain saturated the top soil, converting it to brown mush that all too easily adhered to the back of his trousers.
‘What is up with you? Too much partying last night, huh?’ observed Johansson as Jai stretched, trying to shake off the inertia of his sleep in the car. Jai hadn’t seen his reflection yet but if he looked how he felt then, well perhaps it was best he didn’t see himself. Judging by the smug look Johansson wore it was clear that he had looked better. There had been no time for him to get washed properly that morning, the urgent call to duty too insistent that he be awake and ready. He had ignored the incessant chirps and beeps of his PAD, buried in the warm caress of his mattress and duvet, completely submerged in drunken unconsciousness – until he was fished out by the growing crescendo of alert tones and answered the confounded device to be confronted with Johansson’s large face taking up his PAD’s holo display, leering at him like some demonic vision. The vision informed him that it, PK Erland Johansson, freshly arrived from the Swedish prefecture, would require his services and that it had been him trying frantically to catch him and that he, PK Imran Jai, was the only local PK asset available.
The only human one at any rate.
Jai had muttered something about a day off and been answered with a protocol number that meant Jai’s day off had evaporated like ice on a red-hot skillet. Sleep was an unaffordable luxury with a murder to investigate and with the previous night’s excesses oozing from his pores and coating his skin in a layer he wished he could just scrape off, PK Imran Jai had crawled reluctantly out of bed, got dressed and ordered his car to take him the short drive from Glasgow’s West End to Charing Cross. But not with any sense of urgency.
‘Why are you here, anyway? Levinson from London is the closest PK, where is he?’ asked Jai, his sour mood refining his tone so that it was scalpel sharp. Johansson took some gum from his pocket, offering Jai a piece before he elected to take one.
‘You not got the update? Another murder to look at in London, he had to call in a PK asset from the French prefecture to assist so you get me I am afraid, you know the protocol, murders need two human PK assets. Two murders in a day as well as the riots; peace must be falling apart here on the island, huh?’
Jai grunted what could have been a thank you or an insult as he took the offered gum, not sparing the other man as much as eye contact.
‘Protests, not riots,’ Jai murmured, his head feeling thin bone-china delicate. The distinction seemed lost on Johansson; his face was unchanged, still sporting a grin.
‘When did you arrive? Must have been hellish early. Intracontinental metro from Landskrona?’ asked Jai. Johansson beamed back. ‘Yes, and perhaps some of us are just keen.' Jai acknowledged this with a grunt. Behind his bloodshot eyes he took a mental note to check the metro times. And also why a Swedish asset; Eire, Benelux and Germany were all closer after all.
'I don't think we have worked together before, have we?' said Johansson as the two trudged through the sodden ground to the cargo way tunnel entrance and the scene of the crime. The incessant rain was seeping down Jai's back, forcing him to quicken his pace. Johansson matched him, perhaps eager or conceivably it was simply that the rain was finding its way down his back too.
'No,' replied Jai as he shrunk inside the protective enclosure of his three-quarter-length raincoat.
'Man of few words, eh?' chirped Johansson, doing his best to keep up. Jai kept on walking, ignoring the other man’s playful observation. They were down beneath the overhead roadway in what could only be described as a giant artificial gash in the cityscape. The surface level was high above, maybe by as much as forty or fifty metres. The ground beneath them was unpaved and around them the dull structures that underpinned Glasgow loomed high like the shins of some unmoving sentinels. Jai was not in the mood for banter of any variety, least of all that of a young PK that he had not yet made his mind up about. Johansson was taller than Jai, a good ten centimetres easily, though as they crouched and hurried through the rain this difference in their respective statures was not so pronounced.
The grey polycrete mouth of the cargo way tunnel entrance offered a welcome respite from the rain, allowing Jai to ponder the news Johansson had just given him. Two murders? Murders were rare enough in Eurasia these days, and two in one day? In fourteen years as a PK that was unprecedented as far as Jai knew. Rumours abounded of murders, things happening off the social radar, but Jai gave little credence to these events. Tales such as those of transhuman monsters rampaging through Berlin were little more than urban myths as far as he knew. If such things did occur then surely the all-pervasive media would be all over it?
Everyone and every semi-intelligent piece of hardware is a journalist nowadays.
‘Not so pretty down here,’ observed Johansson as the two men cowered in the circular aperture to the cargo way.
Jai shook the rain from his coat frowning. ‘No, only service drones and Ridgers down here,’ he observed as he thought about PK drone reports of bio-modded teens being moved on from such spaces. The early morning gloom was compounded by the imposing drabness of the polycrete structures of lower level Charing Cross, the rain seeming to inject its dreariness into the material. Typical Glasgow thought Jai. ‘This an automated call in then?’ he asked as the two PKs stood dripping and waiting for their escort.
Johansson narrowed his eyes, ‘I sent you the case notes.'
Jai stared levelly back, deciding that thus far he was not taking to the Swede at all. Jai had slept in the car on the way over to the crime scene, not bothering to read any background or listen to the AI recant a tally of the evidence collected to date. He still felt drunk, fuzzy and not quite in focus, like a lens lazily pointed at a swiftly improvised scene.
A small football-sized spherical drone drifted silently over. Holographic controls and warnings clung to the small sphere like atmosphere to a planet. Once the drone was an arm’s length away the red hue to the holo mellowed to green and it beeped its assent at the two PKs. ‘Follow me please, gentlemen,’ the drone said amiably, returning back along the tunnel.
A burst of self-awareness overcame Imran Jai as he thought of the senior eyes that would be on this case, watching through assorted drones and PK equipment, maybe even through their escort. Jai smartened up as much as he could. The effort was in vain, however: he did not hide his hangover well. His coat hung limply over his shoulders like the pelt of some pathetic, defeated and sodden animal. His tunic was in various stages of escaping his trousers waistband and his jet black hair resembled a couch whose upholstery had been ferociously cleaved open. For all Imran Jai affected an air of not caring so much, there was still part of him that was a cadet, a trainee and still junior in the senior eyes that could be appraising him now, through the eyes of any of the machines visible or otherwise around him. Jai turned his thoughts to other things, eager to escape feeling uncomfortable. But the tunnel mouth and its enveloping mass, like the drunken recollections from last night, offered no respite for Jai’s embattled brain.
Fifty metres above both men’s heads various roads and transport arteries connected under the watchful gaze of St. George’s Mansions, its elaborate sandstone façade juxtaposed with the modern utilitarian architecture below. Long ago this area had been much different, the space above populated with sandstone buildings full of commerce and residences used to the passing noises and excretions of horses and their carts. This antique image eventually gave way to almost two hundred years of higher capacity roads, at first a trench containing a motorway, then a deeper hole to hold more transport ways, cargo tunnels and rapid transit and metro lines. The subterranean infrastructure web that enabled so much of Eurasian life to thrive was built of these layers; out of sight but seldom out of mind. Jai and Johansson were at the bottom of this transport stratum, beneath the streets and commerce ways, where no architectural flair was required to enchant the eye; everything was dour, functional and utilitarian. Down here beneath the streets and roads it was as close to industrial as could be found within Glasgow’s city boundary, a hidden reminder of the city’s harsher past beyond the vestigial monuments such as the Finnieston Crane.
The drone halted at a large metallic door and floated indolently down to eye level like a party balloon running low on helium. It ran a blue laser over both men, re-confirming their identity, before moving aside and bleeping its consent for them to enter the crime scene. The carbometallic door thunked and thudded into life, sending deep harmonics through the bones of both PKs. Behind was a pitched black tunnel. The two men looked at each other before carefully treading forwards.
The service tunnel entrance was circular and large enough for both men to enter side by side. Lights automatically faded up from low ambient to an almost intolerable brightness as the inbuilt systems detected the two men walking along the tunnel. Jai shielded his overly sensitive eyes from the barrage. Johansson seemed only mildly fazed by the lights, his mind presumably taken up with other things, probably impending small-talk that would be as welcome in Jai’s ears as slug in his salad. Several metres into the tunnel the lights dulled sufficiently to reveal another large, circular, grey carbometallic door, which was every bit as monotonous as the extensive surrounding structure. This place really hadn’t been built with beauty in mind, thought Jai as he approached this second opening.
The door made a loud clunk that both men felt through their feet and then rolled open with a hiss, allowing the smell of the tunnels below to seep out. It was a dry, metallic scent that spoke of a dehydrated and desiccated atmosphere, large electrical machines and high voltage inductive mover coils. The smell was less than optimal for the overly sensitive senses of Jai. But again Johansson seemed to be happy enough, his large face and ruddy cheeks barely able to suppress the semi-permanent smile he wore.
‘Are you always this pleased with yourself or is it just murders that bring out your playful side?’ Jai asked, staring pointedly at the grinning Swede. Johansson kept his eyes ahead, only peering back briefly at Jai.
‘Come now, two murders in one day in the same prefecture at the same time there were riots, historic stuff,’ said Johansson, his gaze resting only briefly on Jai’s unfaltering stare. ‘Perhaps some of us are eager to prove ourselves. This is the type of investigation on which reputations are forged; look at the Mbeki incident in Naples last year, hmmm? The Anarchist angle to this series of events must be considered; surely the riots and murders are not coincidence?' Johansson’s grin was still locked in place, his eyes restless. Was this nervousness? Jai wasn’t sure. The only thing he was sure of was that the Swede prattles too much.
‘There is a large distinction between riots and protests. Surely this you know or perhaps there is a language problem, something lost in translation?’ snapped Jai as he made effort not to break his pace along the tunnel.
Johansson did not drop his smile, merely downgraded it back to a smirk. 'My English is fine, PK Jai, better than your Swedish I am sure. And tell me, why are you so keen to distinguish between different types of civil disobedience?’
Jai stopped dead in his tracks as if hitting an invisible wall. He was only now conscious that his feet had been squelching as he walked. ‘Civil disobedience?’ he parroted back, his tone dripping in something approaching horror, his face similarly set. Johansson made to answer but Jai shushed him with a wagging forefinger, ‘Phrases like that send a chill down my spine, PK Johansson. Our job is to keep the peace, not to be arbiters of civil happiness. And obedience? Since when were we to treat the public like unruly animals? Those people yesterday got together to express displeasure at the government. Last time I checked it was our right to do such things.’
‘Our right, PK Jai?’ asked Johansson, stressing the word our enough for it to be its own question.
Jai’s head throbbed with the effort of talking in such a direct tone while feeling so... delicate. He imagined his skull as an eggshell, his brains ready to ooze out at the slightest hard contact.
Never ever again.
‘I am not so sure that empathy with the disruptive elements of society is such a healthy thing for a PK,’ said Johansson levelly, now staring straight at Jai, his face become a blank emotionless slate.
Jai exhaled loudly and walked away, shaking his head. ‘You’ll go far in this game, PK Johansson, you’ll go very far.’
The large Swede stood still and screwed up his face as he processed Jai’s comment. ‘Game?’ he asked Jai’s departing figure before shaking himself free of his query and jogging to catch up with him, several metres further down the tunnel.
Jai didn’t answer. He had worked with Johansson’s type before; eager, young and morally idealistic, full of enough nervous energy to paper over the cracks of inexperience. And brimming with many unhealthy institutional notions.
Civil disobedience? Heaven helps us...
Maybe once Jai had been that type. Once. Maybe. Peacekeeping served as a good starting point for those politically minded and Johansson was conceivably that type. The reference to anarchists and “civil disobedience” at the start of an official investigation convinced Jai that perhaps he was dealing with a politician in the making. That or someone dangerously biased, though the two often seemed as one to Jai. PK Imran Jai had no such political leanings, however, not now; politics was an investment for those youthful enough not to have already become jaded by the vagaries of life. Sure, Jai had seen the politically motivated around him become jaded too, but not before setting their ideologies in stone, unlikely to be washed away by the prevailing winds and rains of change. There was no word that ended in ism that Jai felt strongly enough about to hang his beliefs on, so in lieu of a coherently obvious ideology he often preferred to keep his cards an atom’s breadth from his chest, happy to be as unpredictable as Glasgow’s weather if needs be. For Jai there were too many other ways to be unhappy with your lot; politics was just a frosting of misery on life’s pretty tasteless cake.
The small-smooth walled tunnel came to an abrupt end; the only way from here was down. As they entered the cramped, rattling cage of the elevator before them Imran Jai thought back to the last murder he had worked on. It too had taken place in a dark space beneath a city, away from the prying eyes of both people and machines. It had happened thirteen years ago, when Jai had been a Peacekeeper barely a year, his inexperience manifest in the same career-centric myopia that he suspected might be feverishly gripping PK Erland Johansson right now. Jai decided he had not been as much of an annoying prick as the burly Swede, though whether others he worked with at the time agreed with this conclusion was entirely a different story. A story very much misty to Jai. The only other murder PK Imran Jai had investigated was that of a child. It had taken place in Belfast, in a dank cellar, a remnant of an old pub in a historic quarter of the city called Dunmurry. The killer in that instance had been easy to find: his DNA in the form of semen on the child combined with footage of the assailant entering the crime scene enough to gain an easy conviction. Sexual abuse cases were a one in six million chance these days – behavioural therapies had seen to that – but not all therapies worked. Hate, violence and hunger were hardwired into the human condition and to many the unravelling of this wiring with therapy was anathema to humanity and the inherent properties of liberty contained within. Several generations of subtle genetic tinkering were viewed perhaps as kindling to the fire of societal dissonance that burned all too frequently nowadays. Just one more thing that could spur on “civil disobedience” when viewed against a backdrop of hundreds of years of general bastardry by an amorphous ruling class. Irrelevant of one’s feelings on such matters, no one could deny that the world at large was a much safer place now. Comparatively speaking.
As the metal cage of the elevator shook to a bone-clattering halt Jai hoped that this wouldn’t be a case like the last murder. He had not enjoyed any aspect of that case, the press badgering him, the family and their unrestrained outrage, Jai’s own trauma seeing the girl’s corpse, the nightmares it provoked in him and the sickly sweet satisfaction he gleaned from catching the perpetrator. It was one thing to read about murders and murderers and quite another to look one in the eye, to know what he had done and to hear his words, the brazen boasts of a broken mind. No, Imran Jai had not enjoyed the experience at all and he wondered how policemen of old ever managed when things of that nature were happening all the time. Perhaps his vocation would not have been open to him hundreds of years ago, perhaps he was too squeamish, somehow lacking the toughness required to endure such trials. Or perhaps he was just over analysing things.
Johansson lifted the small flimsy gate of the elevator open for Jai and then followed him down into the dimly lit polycrete cavern towards the hum of busy forensics drones and the sharp glare of temporary floodlights. As Jai approached the light he could make out several small drones that fluttered around the floodlit space like frenzied hummingbirds, swooping and ducking, presumably running scans and tests. Jai was supposed to know the full extent of what these machines did, but he was never too interested in the process of forensics, just the results. He much preferred investigating fraud; at least there was no bloodsoaked or semen-spattered child corpses in fraud cases. Fraud was a more pleasant form of moral depravity.
The small metallic drones glinted under the spotlights. One made Jai flinch as it flew past him, back inside the casing of the first response master drone that sat and impassive outside the area lit up by the spotlights. On top of its dumpy two-metre-tall frame rested a sensor stalk like a small head dappled in multicoloured jewel-like eyes. This machine, the first response master drone, was the first piece of PK equipment on the scene. It immediately took itself to the scene of any crime that required forensic investigation, arriving in advance of human assets that could contaminate the crime scene with their presence. Jai had only seen one of these machines once before, so rare were the occasions when they would be used. Indeed, there were only three in the entire British prefecture, making them almost as geographically numerous as PKs. This machine was the hub from which all of the smaller forensic machines on the scene emanated. Beneath the large drone’s gaze, bathed in the crisp white spotlights, lay the purpose of the PK’s visit. What looked at first like a severed manikin torso complete with head and arms lay prostrate on the tunnel floor. Imran Jai wandered closer, stepping inside the boundary of the spotlights, under the gaze of the large forensic drone. As he did so a yellow banner hologram flashed in front of him and a gentle woman’s voice said, ‘Step back, please, you are attempting to enter a live forensic scene, step back please.'
Jai stepped back, obeying the cordial accent-free voice. The yellow holographic banner conveyed the same message in bold black scrolling letters before fading back to nothing once Jai was safely back far enough.
‘So, what do you think then, huh?’ asked Johansson as he circled the scene. ‘Pretty much as the description on the way over said?’
‘Yeah, pretty much,’ lied Jai. He had ignored the description of the scene in favour of sleep as his car drove him across the city to the crime scene. It was not even eight in the morning yet and with barely two hours sleep under his belt Jai was not ready for this. He looked at the body again; this time not trespassing into the forensic drone’s cordoned off area. The torso belonged to a man. The face had a black beard and wore a terrified expression that looked to have been preserved from the instant he was killed. Some incredibly sharp instrument had felled the man; his torso lay on the ground, arms up attempting to guard the petrified face from whatever was about to happen to him. Whatever had happened to him had chopped him in half, cauterising the bottom of the torso and leaving no blood or remnants of his legs that Jai could see.
‘The victim is one Edward Chandler, thirty-six years old, no previous on his record. The maintenance sensors found him and alerted us immediately,’ said Johansson, consulting his PAD, the light from it illuminating his grinning face in a sinister blue hue. Jai found it even easier to dislike his Swedish colleague at the moment, his mannerisms, his tone; the whole package was annoying him. Johansson continued, ‘The telemetry from the drones says that Mr Chandler’s bottom half was evaporated, likely from the inductive mover coils. The cauterisation of the wound and the presence of toxins around the wound are consistent with exposure to massive electrical current.’
Jai stepped back from the lit area, keeping a conscious distance away from the large inductive mover coils on the wall of the tunnel. Johansson looked up from his PAD, still grinning. ‘They are isolated off, no need to worry. They are perfectly safe.’
‘Any sensor feeds from the entrance to the tunnel, then?’ inquired Jai, continuing to maintain a cautious distance from the portentous-looking mover coils despite Johansson’s words.
‘No, the best views we have of the tunnel entrance are from the traffic cams on the roadway interchange above, but their resolution is too low to glean anything accurate –they are positioned about four hundred metres away and not configured to concentrate on this section. Whoever chose this place knew it was not well surveilled.’
Jai walked back towards the body. ‘Why is there still some of the body left? I imagine to sneak down here you would know that surveillance of the area is low and you would have some idea about how to disable the safety mechanisms around these mover coils, as well as how to gain access to a restricted area in the first place. So why go to all that hassle to leave remains? The mover coils have enough juice in them to eviscerate an entire body surely?’
Johansson nodded slowly as he flicked through data on his PAD. ‘Yes, I thought this too. The planning to get here is meticulous. The logs say that door up top has not been opened in eighteen days. Thus far the drones can find no DNA or other forensic traces that point to a perpetrator.’ Johansson looked up at Jai face beaming. ‘We have a proper mystery, huh? Exciting stuff!’
Imran Jai surveyed the scene, turning his back on the eager Johansson, who was hunched over his PAD, the light from its three-dimensional holoscreen painting his face different colours as he swiped and scanned through variously nested video feeds and assorted and interlinked sensor telemetry tables. The dry air of the tunnel was deathly still and stuck in Jai's throat, causing him to cough. He wandered down the elliptical tunnel a few metres, leaving the halo of the floodlights for the invasive gloom of the tunnel beyond. The inductive mover coils hung ominously on the wall, their ringed-coil shape casting eerie serpentine shadows on the millimetrically even tunnel walls. Normally the tunnel was sealed off, the atmosphere pumped from it to cut the aerodynamic resistance the cargo freight train would experience in transit. Jai turned back towards the scene and Johansson.
'Have you looked at the equipment logs? This tunnel would have to have been pressurised for people to be down here.'
Johansson peered up from his PAD, narrowing his eyes, then looked back at the device and continued to enthusiastically swipe and jab the holoscreen, moving tray-like nests of data to one side as he dug to find the relevant data.
'Checking that now,' Johansson reported. His face was buried in the holodisplay, his eyes darting rapidly through assorted layers of contextual data.
Jai walked back towards the floodlit area, careful not to look directly into the piercing white spotlights. His head ached and the dry tunnel air only exacerbated the thirst he felt.
'No logs recorded. I accessed the system controller and it reports nothing either. This is strange; the tunnel is normally purged of atmosphere and there are multiple levels of redundancy within the sensor system for safety reasons. All of this was circumvented somehow. I cannot figure this out,' said Johansson. His grin had now waned, to be replaced by a more stoic professionalism, his eagerness subsiding to stern shakes of his head.
'How many murders you ever investigated?' asked Jai in a tone drier than the tunnel air.
'This will be my first one,’ said Johansson without removing his gaze from his PAD. Indolence had set upon the fervency of Johansson's swiping and prodding. Jai examined the other man casually, trying to ensure that he was not caught in his peripheral vision sizing the younger PK up. Perhaps Johansson had thought this would be as simple as turning up, checking through some preliminary data and sensor telemetry, and then setting off in hot pursuit of a lead. Maybe his drop in youthful energy was a result of some unexpected complexity unravelling from the scene. Whatever it was the Swede expected, it was now looking less likely to be fulfilled. Johansson’s face dropped further towards seriousness and he seemed to grip the corners of his PAD more tightly. Reliance on the imperviousness of the all-pervasive sensor nets and their associated technologies had dulled the instincts and heightened the expectations of younger PKs, Jai had noticed, though of course the same was true back when he had graduated. Technology and the ubiquity of it as well as the benefits it conferred had been present thirteen years ago when Jai was a rookie PK. People Jai trained with also seemed dull of wit in the same way Johansson appeared to be: all products of a low-crime high-automation society. It was often easy to give oneself false credit, to assume you had things sussed and were working to some larger game plan, to assume that when you were wet behind the ears and starting out you weren’t so stupid. Rightly or wrongly Jai still felt stupid even though the backs of his ears and long since dried.
Less time kissing arse more time keeping the peace.
Jai had always liked the idea of being a detective, though now it was largely a romantic fiction from a bygone era, much like being a dashing knight saving a damsel in distress; parallels existed though the romance was often drained from them like water from a sponge. Despite his dislike of Johansson, Jai empathised with him, his position as a rookie, but only to a point; he detected smugness in the Johansson’s earlier tones, a sort of I know what you were up to last night quality to his speech and manner. This and his comments about the riots put the brakes on full empathy with his Swedish colleague. He, like Jai in Belfast thirteen years ago, would have to learn the hard way.
There’s nothing easy about murder.
‘Don’t be too hasty with assumptions, PK Johansson,’ he said, ‘You have made the assumption that the deceased made his way down here somehow, whether coerced or not, yet no sensor evidence shows this to be the case. What about the body being thrown from the cargo train?’
‘But those are hermetically sealed at port; the records on my PAD show that all the trains through here are sealed that way,’ protested Johansson. The young Swede’s quick answer made Jai pause and massage his temples slowly in a circular fashion.
‘What is easier to forge, a port record or the logs from a multiply redundant safety system?’ Jai’s fingers worked the skin around his forehead. He looked up and this time Johansson had no quick answer: he seemed caught in two minds about whether to consult his PAD or attempt to throw his meagre ration of intuition at the question. In the end he elected neither and gave Jai a long gormless rabbit-in-the-headlights stare, inviting Jai to fill the silence, which he did.
‘Check to see if there was oxygen in his lungs when he died, and just exactly how long the body has been decomposing. Did it start when we pressurised the tunnel?’
Johansson nodded slowly and began to swipe at his PAD and manipulate holo controls.
‘Results indicate he had oxygen in his lungs and the decomposition is rated to have begun within minutes of the request to come down here and the tunnel being pressurised,’ said Johansson, his dander picking up again. Jai shook his head at the other PK as he busily kept gesturing and swiping at his PAD.
Sweden’s finest? I hope not...
'I'm going back up to the surface to get a drink, are you coming?' asked Jai as he made a start towards the rickety cage of the elevator. Before Johansson could answer an incoming call tone sounded from his PAD; its flashing light intermittently illuminated his face. The large forensic drone also emitted a shrill tone, in time with the sound from Johansson's PAD and the vibrating thrum of the PAD in Jai's jacket pocket.
'Must be the boss,' said Jai, turning to face Johansson and the crime scene. 'Well answer it, then.'
Johansson looked blankly at Imran Jai, his face frozen statue-still.
'Oh for fuck’s sake!' Jai strode smartly over to the large forensic drone. 'Go ahead!' he barked at the drone’s inert face. A shaft of green light beamed from one of the jewel-like eyes set in the drone's ridiculously proportioned head. The beam hit the tunnel floor sharply, forming a green haze that rapidly filled the air like an organised fog. Another laser from the same source suddenly punctured the projected mist; this time a blue beam, which was quickly followed by a red one of similar intensity. The haze settled into the shape of a tall, svelte figure several metres from the large drone and outside the cordoned off section. Within a second the haze was animated and detailed and from it a tall woman with a commanding face underpinned with subtle features emerged. It was Chief Municipal Administrator Victoria Endress. Her holo projection began to speak as the red, blue and green slowly pigmented into a full colour three-dimensional representation.
‘Gentlemen, I am sorry I cannot be there in person but duty calls me elsewhere. Are you able to talk me through the situation?’ Her tone was sharp and professional. Jai noted that her question lacked the inquisitive uplifting in tone normally reserved for inquiries; this was a subtle command, as subtle as she got anyway. Jai walked towards the hologram, taking a reluctant lead.
‘Chief Administrator, good morning, we are still undertaking our preliminary assessment of the scene. However, at this stage there appears to be little to no material evidence, at least obvious stuff like sensor telemetry or biological traces beyond that of the victim’s.’
The Chief Administrator stood still and gazed levelly at Jai. ‘I would like a report for five o’clock today, PK Jai, is that understood? I cannot have civil upset over this incident; we have had enough disruption these past twenty-four hours with the riots. Between this and the other suspicious death in London questions are being asked from higher up in the Eurasian Confederacy and I would like to have answers to give them, PK Jai.’
‘Protests,’ breathed Jai. Victoria Endress shot him a look but Jai proffered no verbal response. He had done this dance with the Chief Administrator before and was not in the mood to be dressed down in front of Johansson, and by a politician of all people.
Victoria Endress made a show of looking at the pale figure of Imran Jai, from head to toe. ‘You look rather worse for wear, PK Jai. You are our local Peacekeeper; I expect you won’t let the side down, will you?’ Jai shook his head and kept his barbed tongue stowed firmly in his shut mouth as the holographic form of the chief municipal administrator made a show of looking off to the side, apparently down the tunnel. In her office or wherever she was beaming this from she must have been reading side notes. Jai caught Johansson’s gaze and he momentarily arched both eyebrows at the other man as the hologram turned round again. ‘From what I can tell you have been successful in investigating murder before PK Jai. Is this correct?’
‘Yes Chief Administrator, thirteen years ago in Belfast.’
The well-dressed representation of Victoria Endress walked up to where Jai stood and addressed him bluntly. ‘Don’t let me down, PK Jai. I want something by five today, I do not want any fuck ups, the bureaucracy will be watching this. I scarcely need remind you of the gravity of the past day’s events. The spotlight is on us, PK Jai.’
Us?
Jai shook his head and studied his shoes as he shuffled his feet. Jai felt his face redden as he glanced towards the other PK and away from the commanding holographic representation of Victoria Endress.
‘Good, I expect something at five. Good day, gentlemen.’ And with that the well-dressed figure of the Chief Municipal Administrator puffed out of existence as the light from the forensic drone’s pea-head blinked out. Jai exhaled loudly, purging the pent up frustration he had been holding in like a breath under water.
‘Five today does not give us much time,’ said Johansson from behind his PAD.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ said Jai, smartly resuming his return to the elevator. ‘You coming?’
Johansson shook his head. ‘Coming? We only just got here, there is more data to compile and evidence to search for. We need to do this.’ The tall frame of Johansson looked every bit as shocked and wounded as a child with no presents on Christmas morning. Clearly Jai was not doing as expected of him, not doing his duty, not giving the hapless young PK more to go on.
‘Suit yourself,’ said Jai turning on his heels.
‘But wait, what about the forensic data? The crime scene model for simming has not yet been built,’ pleaded Johansson, but Imran Jai had already entered the elevator leaving the Swede to look worried in his wake.
‘Try not to do the drones out of a job,’ said Jai as the elevator grumbled upwards, back to the surface.
Hammering the chunky mechanical buttons to make the elevator ascend sent sharp waves of pain penetrating to the soft centre of Jai’s fragile skull. He had to take his aching head back to the surface and away from the acrid air of the tunnel. The drones would do their work and from a comfortable space Jai could do his; there was no need for him to remain, particularly not as hungover as he was. Thinking did not require discomfort. Jai had done his minimum duty in adding human confirmation that a crime had occurred and was being catalogued correctly. Peacekeeper procedure said two PKs must be involved in a murder inquiry; they said nothing about the exact nature of this involvement or what to do in the event of a stinking hangover. At least Jai told himself this. Procedural technicalities could be someone else’s concern for the morning.
Exiting the tunnel Imran Jai noticed the faint outline of an Anarchist symbol, the bleached-out circle surrounding the letter A. It had been spray-painted on the polycrete exterior wall and then subsequently cleaned away, more than likely by an under-zealous maintenance drone, making it just barely visible in the fresh morning light. Johansson's words echoed in Jai's head: “The Anarchist angle to this series of events must be considered.” Imran Jai smiled to himself and walked out into the crisp air. The rain was gone and his headache had lessened. He walked to his car feeling perhaps he had a slightly better measure of his temporary colleague.