Great North Road

  ‘I’ve been dumped a one-oh-one with a North.’

  ‘You just said you’ll be taken straight off.’

  ‘Oh away wi’ ya, pet!’

  She laughed contemptuously at his attempt to speak Geordie. ‘My theatre has been in the diary since before Christmas.’

  ‘But—’

  Out on the landing there was another fast exchange of heated insults as Zara came out of the bathroom and Will rushed in.

  ‘It’s their first day back at school,’ Jacinta said. ‘You’d let them go alone? In this weather? What kind of father is that?’

  ‘It’s not like they’re just starting there.’ Sid knew it was coming, she knew it too. It was down to who broke first.

  Him . . . of course.

  ‘Can’t you call Debra?’

  She threw her hands up. ‘She’ll start bloody charging us, she’s like a taxi service for our kids these days.’

  ‘We do it for hers.’

  ‘Aye, when there’s a month with a Z in it.’

  He gave her the firm-bordering-on-exasperation look. Because that made so much difference when you’ve been married for eleven years.

  ‘I’ll call,’ Jacinta said with a sigh. ‘Given as how you’re so scared of her.’

  ‘I am not—’

  ‘But we’ll need to have them round to dinner. To say thanks, an’ all.’

  ‘Oh, not John for a whole evening? If boring was a sport he’d be trans-space champion.’

  ‘Are you taking them to school, or do you want me to make the call?’

  Sid growled and shook his head furiously. ‘Make the call.’

  *

  Even now, with Will eight years old and Zara six, Sid still couldn’t quite get his head around seeing them in their school uniforms. They were babies, far too young to be wrenched out of the house each day. Yet there they were at breakfast, looking impossibly smart in dark-red sweaters and blue shirts, like miniaturized adults.

  Sid busied himself making the porridge, checking the certification seals before opening the packets. There had been talk down at the station about companies slipping unregulated batches into their processing plants, importing them from some of the settled worlds where organic verification was nonexistent and cash was supreme. Nothing you’d ever find out about on the licensed news.

  ‘Why is Debra taking us to school this morning?’ Zara asked as Jacinta tried to brush her long hair into some kind of order.

  ‘Both of us are busy, pet. Sorry,’ Sid told her. The pan on the induction hob was boiling too strongly, so he turned it down to a simmer and set the timer for seven minutes.

  ‘Are you working again, Dad?’ Will asked, his face all earnest.

  ‘Yeah, I’m working again.’

  ‘Can we afford to move now, then?’

  Sid exchanged a look with Jacinta. ‘Yes, we’re thinking about moving again.’ They had lived in the three-bedroom house in Walkergate for five years now. A pleasant enough home, but its age meant it was never designed for the cold of today’s winters, so it cost a fortune to heat. Only having one bathroom was a pain, and the zone room was also the dining room. Then there were the neighbours, who were wary about having a policeman on the street.

  ‘What about school?’ Zara protested. ‘All my friends are there. I don’t want to leave.’

  ‘You’ll stay at the same school,’ Sid assured her. It was a private one, after all, which ate huge chunks out of his salary, and was the main reason he’d cultivated supplementary revenue streams income, despite the risks. But nobody sent their kids to public schools if they could afford an alternative.

  ‘Actually I found one last night,’ Jacinta said. ‘I was reviewing estate agent files.’

  ‘Really?’ It was news to Sid. He sipped at a mug of coffee. The smartcells in his mouth detected the caffeine and flashed up a diet intake warning. It was his most sincere New Year resolution to eat better and do more exercise. But he’d barely had any sleep . . . You have to be realistic about such things. He told his e-i to cancel the warning, spooning an extra sugar into the mug in an act of petulant defiance.

  ‘In Jesmond.’

  ‘Jesmond’s nice,’ Will said admiringly. ‘Sun Tu and Hinny live there.’

  ‘Jesmond’s expensive,’ Sid said.

  ‘You gets what you pays for,’ Jacinta replied.

  Sid took the porridge off the hob, and ladled it into the bowls. ‘True.’

  ‘So can I call the agent?’ Jacinta asked.

  ‘Sure, why not.’ They could afford it – he’d stacked up a lot of money in his secondary account over the past few years. Now there was just the problem of how they used it to buy somewhere else without alerting the Tax Bureau. The reason they hadn’t moved before Christmas was because of the attention it would have focused on him. Buying a house while he was on the reduced salary of a suspension would have triggered a host of Tax Bureau monitor programs.

  ‘Mum,’ Will pleaded. ‘Does it have a proper zone room?’

  ‘Yes, it has a proper zone room.’

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘What about en suites?’ Zara asked urgently.

  ‘Five bedrooms, two en suites, one family bathroom.’

  Zara grinned contentedly to herself as she started to stir strawberry jam into her porridge. Just for a moment his family was happy and quiet; Sid felt he ought to put that in some kind of log. Dawn was bringing a harsh grey light to the misted-up kitchen window. It had stopped snowing. He began to have a good feeling about how the day was shaping up.

  ‘If we’re moving to a bigger house, does that mean we can have a puppy now?’ Will asked.

  *

  Newcastle’s central police station was a big glass and stone cube built in 2068, an impressive civic structure to reflect the newfound wealth that was benefiting the whole city as the bioil that flowed through the gateway increased on a near-daily basis. It had replaced the older station which had stood on the corner of Market Street and Pilgrim Street, providing all the facilities a modern police force could possibly want – if only it had the money to operate them.

  The underground garage had four levels, capable of holding staff cars and a hundred and fifty official vehicles from mobile incident control rooms to patrol cars, prisoner vans to fast pursuit cars and smartdust dispenser trucks. A clear victory for design optimism over real-world practicality. Sid had never even seen anyone use the lowest level in all his fifteen years in Newcastle; the police simply didn’t have that kind of fleet.

  Every winter in the city, some councillor raised the idea of heating the roads Scandinavian-style to get rid of the snow and ice – at least in the centre of Newcastle – and each year it was deferred to an appraisal committee. Instead, long-term interests prevailed; low-wage crews and big snowploughs hit the roads and pavements on Monday morning, attempting to clear the weekend’s snow for the armada of office workers heading in to the centre. They’d made a reasonable job leading up to the station’s ramps; Sid drove his four-year-old Toyota Dayon down into the Market Street garage without worrying about sliding. He’d only seen two shunts on the way in, and it’d taken an acceptable fifteen minutes.

  It was coming up on twenty past eight by the time he made it up to the third floor where the serious case offices were situated. The 2North murder had been assigned Office3, one of the larger ones, with two rows of zone console desks that could sit up to twelve specialist network operatives, a couple of zone cubicles, and five hi-rez, floor-to-ceiling wallscreens; one side was partitioned off into four private offices. Thermal exchange climate vents rattled as they produced a stream of air at a temperature three degrees below comfortable, the blue-grey carpet was worn and stained, the furniture was ten years old, but on the plus side, the network systems had all been upgraded last year. Sid knew that was what really counted; clearly O’Rouke knew it as well. Only five of the third-floor offices had been modernized in the last four years.

  Detective Dobson was leading the night shift team, which
consisted of three operatives establishing the procedures Sid had agreed with her at the shift handover last night. She acknowledged him with a quick nod and beckoned him into one of the glass-walled side offices.

  ‘Basic datawork is laid out,’ she told him. ‘We’ve been downloading riverside surveillance mesh memories since five this morning. I’ve gone all the way upstream to the A1 bridge, and taken it two streets back on both sides.’

  ‘Thanks. How far is it to the bridge?’

  ‘Close on seven and a half kilometres, but I’ve included the corresponding road macromesh so you can observe the vehicle traffic. That’s a lot of memory.’ She hesitated before lowering her voice. ‘There are some gaps.’

  ‘Bound to be with this kind of snow.’

  ‘Maybe. See what you think when you review it.’

  ‘Hoookay. Do we have an identity, yet?’

  She gave him a woeful glance. ‘I think it could be a North.’

  ‘Smartarse. Which one? Actually, do we even know how many there are?’

  ‘It’s a difficult figure to find. Northumberland Interstellar isn’t exactly forthcoming about how many times Augustine has been a daddy.’

  ‘Most of the 2s were born to surrogate mothers, weren’t they? Those kids were popped out just to boost NI’s management numbers.’

  ‘Depends which non-licensed site loaded with disgraceful muck-raking gossip you access. But as best as I could find, there’s just under a hundred of them. More 3s, mind; they’re frisky boys, our Norths. But we’re not riding an exponential curve here, thank God. The 2s aren’t big breeders. Why would you, when you know your son’s going to be a few neurones short of a headful? Shame the 3s don’t have that much sense; and there are a lot of sharp little golddiggers out there ready to trap a 3 and collect their palimony, so we’ve no idea about how many 4s are wandering round loose.’

  ‘Best guess?’

  ‘Could be up to three hundred and fifty. I’m not guaranteeing that, mind.’

  ‘And no one’s called this one in missing?’

  ‘He’s been dead for eleven hours minimum now. Early days. Someone will start asking before lunch.’

  Sid glanced back out into the office where Ian had just arrived and was chatting to the night shift. ‘Has the media found out?’

  ‘No. O’Rouke had two techs load monitor programs into the station network as we were setting up. He spoke to all of us direct about what he’d do if anyone leaked it. I think we’re secure so far.’

  ‘That’s not going to last. But thanks for keeping it under wraps.’

  ‘My pleasure. I’ll handover now.’

  ‘Sure.’ Sid put his hand above the zone console’s biometric pad, and told his e-i to log him in to the case. The station network acknowledged his request. The desk systems in the office switched to his personalized programs in their customized layout. ‘Is there a pool?’ he asked casually.

  Dobson gave him a small grin. ‘Certainly not, that would bring disgrace upon the force. Mind you, if you’re still here in the room after lunch you’ll owe me a hundred Eurofrancs.’

  ‘Oh cheers, pet. Nice to know you have that much confidence.’

  ‘You don’t want it,’ she said seriously. ‘Not this one. Let one of O’Rouke’s brown-nosers take it.’

  ‘Aye, I might just.’

  They went back out into the main office. Eva Sealand had just walked in, a senior constable specializing in visual interpretation, who’d reassigned from Leicester eighteen months ago. Sid had worked with her on a semi-permanent basis since she started at Newcastle, a cheerful redheaded Icelandic woman with three kids and a partner in some kind of company network management job which Sid never quite understood.

  ‘Some work for you today,’ he told her. ‘And then some.’

  She smiled as she pulled her hair back and twisted it through an elastic tie. ‘I just heard,’ she said quietly. ‘For real? A North?’

  ‘I was there when they pulled him out of the Tyne last night.’

  ‘Who else have you got?’

  ‘Lorelle should be here soon. I’ve requested some extra members, and I expect we’ll just keep on expanding today.’

  Eva leaned in close. ‘Are you staying?’

  ‘Dobson’s running the sweep,’ he muttered back. His main concern now was if he’d have anybody left to help with his other cases after O’Rouke shifted him back to normal duties. ‘But I’m telling you, pet, there’ll be some overtime to clock up on this, don’t you—’ He broke off, staring in astonishment at the two officers who’d just walked in. ‘Aye, man,’ he grunted.

  Northumberland Interstellar didn’t have a monopoly on employing 2Norths. Given the personality which Kane had been so desperate to duplicate, that trait he valued above all else – his determination – could switch them one of two ways: either they went straight to work in the family company, keen to push it further on so many fronts – financial, industrial, political, legal – one heading up every department with younger versions ready to assume top-dog position; or they struck out for themselves, equally resolute to show they didn’t need family to get ahead. The second type were in a minority, and tended to set up businesses which ran in parallel with the interests of Northumberland Interstellar. An even smaller minority went into public service. In fact, Sid knew of only two: Abner 2North and Ari 2North, who were now standing in Office3’s doorway, looking round expectantly.

  Abner was the elder of the two, in his late forties, reaching detective second grade, specializing in forensic analysis. Sid had worked with him several times in the last decade, and always found him a very effective officer no matter what case they were assigned. The fact Abner hadn’t reached a higher grade was always tied up with the biggest, longest-lasting gossip in the station: outside politics, what motivation any of them could possibly have for joining the force was anyone’s guess. Sid didn’t worry himself over that – it was results which counted in this game, and Abner had a respectable clean-up rate. Ari was maybe twelve years younger, still a senior constable in the data management track, and equally capable. There were few ways of telling them apart. The occasional difference in hair length helped; Norths had dark mouse-brown hair that curled beyond any cosmetic product’s ability to tame, and didn’t grey until they were well over fifty. But they all favoured keeping it cropped short, adding to the difficulty of separating them. Features didn’t help either, as they were unnervingly identical: the flattish nose, rounded chin, grey-blue eyes, bushy eyebrows. They were also the same height, and Kane had clearly been one of those enviable people who didn’t put on weight on an age-related basis. Voice was a uniform gravelly bass that always sounded slightly too loud. The most common way to guess their age (and therefore difference) was a quick scope of the neck, which thickened as they got older, a process Sid always compared to rings in a tree trunk. But it was a quick and easy tag, as some of the older Norths he’d seen had necks as wide as their head.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Sid said quietly in greeting.

  Abner gave him a tight smile. ‘Morning, boss. Good to see you’re taking the lead on this.’

  ‘Thanks. So you understand who our victim is?’

  ‘Aye,’ Ari said.

  ‘And you’re okay with that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Abner put a hand on Sid’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. There’ll be no bias. Procedure at all times, right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Ari confirmed.

  It gave Sid an odd feeling talking to them – the same face he’d seen bloodless and frozen eight hours ago. Enough to make him question his own judgement. And as for whoever had the smart idea of assigning them to the case . . . O’Rouke, of course. ‘All right then, we still don’t have his identity, and I need it. Once I have a name everything else should just fall into place. Find out for me. Any way you can.’

  ‘There’s no name yet?’ Abner asked. He sounded surprised.

  ‘Early days,’ Sid said. It was a shabby thing to tell them, but he wasn?
??t even sure if he should offer condolences for their loss. After all, the victim was family, right?

  Lorelle Burdett, a generalist constable who was a regular on Sid’s case teams, arrived a couple of footsteps ahead of Royce O’Rouke, and Sid stopped worrying about trivia like the etiquette of clone family ties. Newcastle’s Chief Constable was dressed in his full uniform that morning, a dark tunic with an impressive number of coloured service award bands and plenty of gold braid. O’Rouke was a sixty-seven-year-old who had risen through the ranks by virtue of a respectable clean-up rate and an inordinately dirty political skill. You were either one of his players, showing total loyalty as a useful scapegoat, or you would spend your entire career stalled as you investigated one suspected illegal toxic waste tipping after another.

  Two aides in smart dark suits slid in behind O’Rouke; Chloe Healy, the force’s information officer, and Jenson San, the senior staff representative. Sid struggled not to give them the stone-face of contemptuous hatred. He really despised their type – enforcers and executioners of the regime – and as for their ability to misinterpret and misrepresent on behalf of their Dark Overlord, it was something that he could never master, let alone better.

  Sid braced himself. This would be the moment when he was taken aside and given his new case assignment for the week. It was a shame – he could have done with the overtime.

  O’Rouke shook his hand. ‘How’s it going, Detective?’

  ‘Handover from the night shift almost complete, sir. The preliminary data I requested is downloaded. I’m about to outline the procedures I want followed, and designate assignments.’ He was trying not to be obvious, glancing over O’Rouke’s shoulder to see which senior crony was hovering in the corridor ready to be introduced. But Jenson San closed the office door, and the blue rim light came on to show the room was secure.

  ‘That’s good,’ O’Rouke said; he turned to face the team. ‘All right people, we all know the identity of the victim is going to create a storm of media interest. I want to emphasize that you do not make unauthorized statements. So we’re perfectly clear: that is not one fucking word. Anything, any contact you have with reporter scum or unlicensed site reps, you refer to Chloe here.’ He indicated the information officer. ‘That directive is to be passed right down the chain of command to the police and agency staff you’ll be multiplying your investigation with. I can assure you that whatever the budget requirement you have it will be met. For this I expect a positive result. Newcastle must send out a clear message that no one is above or beyond the law. Nobody arrives here and commits this kind of crime against our most distinguished family and gets away with it. Understood?’