Murder in the Fabric

array of places appeared on the screen, scattered around docklands. In this sort of situation better to get her to come here, rather than he to go there. Or at least that was what Oscar thought. Who knew what the rules were? Or were they universal? He picked one at random.

  In what seemed a matter of seconds, Oscar found himself starting into Natalie’s eyes. Thinking he could easily get lost in them.

  “I’m a beginner at Cyros. Too long in the jungle.” Oscar said.

  “Which jungle?” she said, taking the hint

  “Laos.”

  “I haven’t been there, but it doesn’t look much like jungle on the views that I saw.”

  “Vientiane. No that’s not a jungle. But if you go out, far out. Then you get away from the grid. Away from it all.” he said.

  “You escaped.” she smiled. He hair was dark, and short. A not quite innocent look. As if at the same time she was young, and old.

  “I did. But I came back.”

  “Why?”

  “Nobody like you out there.” he said.

  She smiled again. They talked, about nothing. About themselves. About Melbourne. Until it began to slow.

  “Will I see you again?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  // George

  They decided to ring all of them. Or at least those without a criminal record. On the thinking that this would be a pre-requisite for the interview for the contract. A fishing expedition. Desperate stuff. It seemed way too professional for the outcome. To dispose of a low level everyman you set up a stunt of the highest order. Wipe almost all traces. It was worthy of an organised crime hit, but it was a suburban accident. It made no sense on any level. George listened in on the conversations. Nothing. Until Steve got to Simon Masterson.

  “How would you describe your expertise?” Steve asked

  “Embedded systems. Control. Automotive stuff.” Simon said.

  “We’re investigating the death on the Eastern Freeway. Car jumped the barrier and piled head-on into a truck.”

  “I saw it on the news. Terrible.”

  “You could reprogram a car while it’s in motion, couldn’t you?” Steve said.

  “So could lots of people.”

  “We have a forensic analysis that points us to you.”

  It was the pause that conveyed all of the information.

  “Bullshit.” he said, and promptly disconnected.

  “He knows something.” George said.

  “I’d say he’s our man. But I couldn’t tell you why I’m convinced of that.” Steve said.

  “No chance of getting evidence to bring him to trial. You are charged with stuffing up the reversion of a chip by leaving dummy characters at the end of the file upload.” George said.

  Steve smiled..

  “We watch him. Task a drone.” George said.

  // Mia

  “How goes the gigolo-ing?” Mia asked. Smiling.

  “Well, I think. Only a little more sophisticated than a glance at a youth hostel.” Oscar said.

  “The mating call. Same everywhere.”

  “You seem impervious to it.”

  “Nobody is immune. Don’t you believe it.”

  “I’m meeting her tomorrow.”

  “So how long?”

  “Until what?”

  “Until she is ready to push the button.”

  “A week or so.”

  “Should be ok with the backers. They seem a patient lot.”

  Oscar went to ask about the backers again. But caught his words. Mia didn’t know any more than he did. She really didn’t.

  There was an urban park at the top of the SciTec building. Not quite the highest building in Melbourne. But near enough. A suitable place for Oscar and Natalie to meet again. The park was really just a string of cafes, with the latest in games and tech stuff sprinkled throughout. Young people stretched out on bean bags soaking up 3D this, and 3D that. Some experimental direct brain interface stuff. Oscar hadn’t seen it before, but he found it a bit spooky.

  “Tell me a bit about yourself.” Oscar asked.

  “Not much to tell. I grew up in Middle Park. Parents both executives. Father finance. Mother public relations. Had to do a full schedule analysis to get ten minutes to talk to them. So I quickly gave up.”

  “School?” Oscar asked

  “The best. You know the deal. But I got a scholarship to MacRob and went there.”

  “Selective, isn’t it. Brain lab?” he said

  “You’d think. But it wasn’t like that. Nice people. Good teachers.”

  “So where did it all go wrong?”

  “After VCE. Just fell apart. Sat staring at a wall for six months. Then drifted into the bank.”

  “Parents outraged?”

  “They wanted me to be a brain surgeon or something like that. It’s a big disappointment to them. Bit like being forced to drive a run down old Volkswagen instead of the latest BMW.”

  “Really?”

  “Trophies. It’s all about trophies. They wanted something they could impress their friends with.”

  Oscar waited for the questioning to come back the other way. He had the profiling, the story the backers decided. They had a play for any situation. It was like being controlled by a giant brain. He decided to tell the truth.

  “You?” she asked

  “Like I said. Drifting about Asia for the last five years. Before that, my local high school at Bundoora. I was the top of everything. Then engineering at Melbourne Uni. Always in the top three. Talented, they said.”

  “Until you crossed to the dark side.” she grinned

  He looked up. How much did she know? For a moment he was shaken. Steady, he thought. She doesn’t know anything.

  “Not really. Just contract hacking to pay for the next plane fare. I had an unerring ability to fall in love with a place, want to stay forever. Then six weeks later I would be on a plane to the next paradise.”

  “This apply to people to?” she said

  He smiled. Once he was in truth telling mode, it was hard to flip back.

  “Yes. I guess. Mistake after mistake. But aren’t we all like that?”

  She leaned back in the bean bag and gave him a look. A look that he felt had melted all of his predecessors. Smart. Maybe she was too smart for this gig, Oscar thought.

  // George

  “Nothing on the car programmer.” George said.

  “Huh?” Alice said.

  “Not a thing.”

  “Except that he hacked the car.”

  “More accurately, he was very nervous when we asked him about hacking the car.”

  “And he is one of the five people the wall thinks capable of hacking it.”

  “The wall.” George said.

  “Knows everything. All hail the wall.” she said.

  George smiled. He would rather have been out there in a car trailing behind Masterson. Eating bad food, sitting in the streets. Except that now a drone could do all of that and better.

  “Family?”

  “Wife. Two kids.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “She work?”

  “Kindergarten teacher.”

  “Couldn’t she just be a terrorist to keep me amused?”

  “It’s not all about you George.”

  He smiled.

  “SciTec.” he said, to Alice. Having already absorbed the full volume of facts from the wall.

  “What about it? There’s nothing here to indicate that the company is a factor.”

  “No.”

  “Random. Some kid with a gift. Likes to play.”

  The silence filled the room, as Simon Masterson made his way to another contract programming job. His car weaved through the inner north, always in view from the drone.

  “Who would know about SciTec?” George asked

  “Peter Harris.”

  “I can’t place him.”

  “Drug squad, now a rising star in finance.” she said

/>   As George ascended in the lift, he struggled to come up with a premise. He needed a rationale.

  Peter Harris was mid fifties, lean, serious. He looked like a retired athlete with a suntan. George wondered where you get a suntan in Brunswick. Maybe Peter had some serious clout. But the wall had him as straight, so maybe he just had a sunlamp.

  “Simon Masterson. Contract programmer. We are pretty sure somebody hired him for a hit on Simonovic, our SciTec employee.” George said.

  “Clever. Sad. But how can I help?”

  “SciTec.”

  “What about it?”

  “You tell me.”

  “So now I’m Wikipedia, the CIA fact book?”

  George sat back. As he feared, the lack of motivation was going to be an issue here. He, of course, was right. On the face of it, there was nothing unusual.

  “I’m interested in SciTec’s enemies. I’m assuming they are important enough to have some ?”

  “You have enemies. I have enemies.”

  “Enemies with deep enough pockets to arrange accidents that really and truly look like accidents.”

  “SciTec have an interest in the security industry here. Amongst their other multi-headed type things. Banking, insurance, finance. All of that. They are predominantly Chinese backed, and they like big. Big is better.”

  “So who would have an interest in nobbling them?”

  “The rest of the industry. Not quite a cast of thousands, but lots.”

  “Biggest?”

  “Usual. Nexus, Comaco, Defigo.”

  “Those names mean nothing to me.”

  “I’m sure the wall can give you a crash course. Come to think of it, I used to give a crash course. I could send you the links.”

  George didn’t relish dredging through a course.

  “Give me the 5 minute summary.” he said

  “North and South. The north has all of the resources: iron ore, oil, coal, gas, water, sunshine. South has little of this stuff. So over the last ten years it has been a shrinking south, and a growing north. Rich and powerful. SciTec is a major force in the north. Now they want what is left in the south also.”

  “Thanks.” George said.

  None of which explained why a low