Slab City Blues: The Collected Stories

  I glanced at Joe who said, “Athena, why don’t you take the Chief Inspector through it from the beginning.”

  “OK.” She began to fiddle with her smart, connecting to my terminal display and calling up the earliest known image of Mr Mac in adulthood. “From his graduation ceremony at Lorenzo U.,” she said. “The younger the face, the better the recognition algorithms like it, can get a clearer fix on the underlying bone structure. Joe, uh, Inspector Martell asked me to concentrate on Mr Mac’s Yin-side days. I came up with nothing we didn’t already know on the first pass so I started playing around with the parameters. Sometimes the search gear misses things if there’s a distorted or corrupted image. This time I got a hit.”

  She displayed another image, an adolescent girl holding hands with a woman in her thirties, presumably her mother. They stood smiling outside the gate to some Yin-side mansion. The woman wore a uniform of some kind with her name stitched into the fabric. Lena. At first glance I didn’t find it particularly convincing. They were both dark haired whilst Mr Mac came from a long line of blondies, however, the set of the girl’s eyes was definitely familiar.

  “Comes up as a forty-three percent match when the disparate age factor is taken into account,” Athena said. “But once I ran a check for familial similarity…” She hit an icon on her smart and a new readout flashed on screen, ‘Likelihood of familial relationship: 89%.’

  “Who is she?” I said.

  “Oksana Lenova,” Athena said. “Aged thirteen when this was taken according to the time-stamp on the image, which would make her thirty-three now. It was posted to her smart-wall with the caption ‘Me and mama at work.’ I ran a check on the mansion…”

  “McAllister Towers, right?” I broke in.

  “Well, officially it’s called Villa Splendido, but it was owned by McAllister Enterprises. Sold off when Mr Mac’s father died six years ago…”

  “DNA match on the girl?”

  “She has no criminal record so her bio-data is sealed. But given everything else… I mean, seems pretty, um, obvious, y’know.”

  I stared at her until she blushed and looked away.

  “Relax,” I told her, getting up and reaching for my coat. “I’m sold. This is fine work. You got an address for Miss Wrong Side of the Blankets?”

  “She’s still living Yin-side. Cormorant Apartments, Yin-Twelve. Divorced, no kids. No job either as far as I can tell.”

  “Makes me wonder who’s paying the bills.” I turned to Joe. “Keep an eye on things here. Dr Vaughn and I will go see if the prodigal bro’s been in touch recently.”

  Chapter 8

  “Trust me. A woman knows these things.”

  “Can we just do this, please?”

  Janet moderated her grin as I pressed the buzzer on the door to Oksana Lenova’s apartment. Our IDs had got us past the concierge downstairs, but access to her home would need to be voluntary in the absence of a warrant. She lived in the Cormorant Apartments penthouse suite, a place that I calculated would have cost about a thousand times my annual salary. She answered the door promptly enough, presumably forewarned by the concierge. I knew Athena had been spot on the moment I saw her face, pretty much a feminine version of Mr Mac with slightly higher cheekbones. She was dressed casually in a loose shirt and slacks, cool gaze switching from my ID to Janet’s without much of a reaction, though I noticed how pale her knuckles were as she held the door open.

  “Ms Lenova?”

  She gave a slow nod.

  “My name is Chief Inspector Alex McLeod, Lorenzo City PD. This is my colleague, Dr Janet Vaughn. May we speak to you, please?”

  I saw her knuckles whiten further at the mention of my name before she released the door and stepped back, voice faint as she said, “Sure.”

  The penthouse was all open plan, three tiers of comfort and luxury surrounded by a glass wall affording views of the parks and lakes that characterised the mid Yins. She led us to a couch and gestured for us to sit, though she remained standing with her arms crossed and her back to the view.

  “You have a beautiful home,” Janet told her.

  Oksana Lenova inclined her head at the compliment before turning to me. She started to speak, stopped to clear her throat then tried again. “Is he dead?”

  I didn’t bother asking who she meant, realising this was a moment she’d been expecting for a long time. “Why would you ask that?” I asked instead.

  “He said if you ever appeared on my doorstep it would probably be to tell me he was dead.”

  “It seems he was wrong. As far as I know he’s still very much alive. Though I would like to talk to him.”

  “Arrest him, you mean.”

  “He has done some terrible things, ma’am. Or didn’t you know that?”

  She crossed her arms tighter and turned to face the view, raising her gaze to the faux-sky above. Yin Twelve featured a holo array in its ceiling programmed to render blue skies and clouds throughout daylight hours. At night it would gradually fade to a starlit sky. Like a lot of things about life this side of the Axis, I found the sheer pointless expense of the thing disgusting.

  “I know he has lived outside the law for many years,” she said. “He hasn’t provided details and I have never asked.”

  “But you are aware of his fugitive status?”

  She didn’t turn. “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “You worry for your brother, don’t you, Ms Lenova?” Janet interjected, all kindly sincerity, voice pitched to a soothing tone. “The constant dangers of his life. It wears on you, I see that.”

  Oxana’s mouth curled a little in amused dismissal as she glanced over her shoulder at Janet. “I already have a therapist, thank you.”

  “We haven’t advised you of your rights,” I told her. “Anything you tell us is inadmissible as evidence.”

  “And I assume that’ll change if I refuse to talk to you.” I didn’t say anything and watched her head sag a little. “He said when you eventually turned up to tell you everything I knew. I could trust you, he said.”

  “He was right about that.”

  She turned and moved to an armchair, settling into as relaxed a posture as she could, arms on the rests and legs crossed. “What do you want to know?”

  “When was your last contact with your brother?”

  “Six months ago. He sent me a birthday gift, something he’s done every year since our father died.”

  “What was it, this gift?”

  She nodded to something behind me and I turned to regard a row of framed paintings on the wall. Janet rose from the couch and went to take a look, issuing small gasps of surprised delight as she checked each one in turn. “Charles Rennie Mackintosh,” she said, glancing back at Oksana. “Original watercolour designs, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “I’m a student of design,” the woman replied. “John is always very thoughtful in his gifts.”

  “These are exquisite,” Janet said, returning her gaze to the pictures.

  “And stolen?” I asked.

  “Certainly not,” Oksana snapped. “Each one was legally bought at auction. I have bills of sale and provenance for each picture.”

  “I’m guessing dear old John didn’t deliver these by hand,” I said.

  “They always arrive by special courier. I haven’t seen him in person for nearly three years.”

  “I’ll need an exact date and location for the meeting. And details of how it was arranged.”

  “It wasn’t. Whenever I see him he just turns up unannounced. I was having a cappuccino at a cafe in Yasmin Park and there he was.” A fond smile played over her lips. “‘Sorry it’s been a while, sis,’ he said. We spoke about… nothing that would interest you, I’m sure. It was shortly after my divorce, I think he was worried about me.”

  “The circumstances of the divorce,” I said. “Would you say it was ugly?”

  “What divorce isn’t? My husband and I had been distant from each other for years. The separation was amicable enough, though it
didn’t feel that way at the time.”

  “Was your husband ever abusive?”

  “No.” She angled her head at me, eyes narrowing. “You seem to be asking me the same questions he did, Inspector. And to anticipate your line of enquiry, to the best of my knowledge my ex-husband is alive and well. He remarried and took up an executive position with a Downside bank a year ago.”

  I glanced around at the penthouse. “The settlement pay for all this?”

  “There was no financial settlement. At my late father’s insistence, my husband signed a very binding pre-nup.”

  “You inherited your father’s wealth?”

  “Half of it, yes. The remainder, the half that would have been John’s, went to various charities.”

  “I hate to be indelicate, ma’am, but the circumstances of your birth…”

  “My mother met my father whilst working as a maid in his home,” she said in a tone that was equal parts defiant and defensive. “They loved each other very much. He was unable to extricate himself from his marriage to John’s mother for various reasons, both business and personal. Her family were very well connected politically.”

  “When did John find out about you?”

  “I don’t recall a time when he didn’t know. We were practically raised together. Mama loved him like a son, you see. Mrs McAllister wasn’t around much, her career always came first. On the surface it may appear sordid and tawdry, a rich man keeping his mistress and child a secret for so long, whilst they live under his roof no less. But I grew up in a happy home, Inspector. I wanted for nothing, had a family that loved me and ensured I had an excellent education. John went off to university then took an executive position in McAllister Industries, and Papa fully expected me to follow him. The future was bright for both of us. Then the war started.”

  She fell silent, her face clouding with sadness. “He told me you were comrades, you fought side by side.”

  “We did, for a time.”

  “Did he ever tell you why? What made him run off to join the resistance?”

  Because he enjoyed killing, I didn’t say. A slumming rich kid with a license to slaughter. It was apparent that the Mr Mac I knew was not the rarely seen brother she loved. “No,” I said instead. “He hardly spoke about his past.”

  “You remember how it all started? The event that led to the formation of the UN Orbital Intervention Force and allowed Federal Security to declare martial law.”

  “The Seven Hells.”

  “Yes. Aptly named, weren’t they?”

  She had that right. Seven simultaneous atrocities committed on the most populous habs in orbit. For once the Yin levels had gotten the worst of it, a Sarin gas cloud pumped into the ventilation systems of Yin Nineteen to Twenty-Two. Four hundred people died and two thousand more suffered permanent impairment. By any rational metric, the war started that day.

  “Mama and Papa were holidaying at his lodge in the Yin Nineteen forest park,” Oksana went on. “Mama… died instantly. Papa spent the better part of a year in intensive care. John…” She gave a helpless shrug. “John went crazy. UNOIF were quick to blame separatist terrorists, of course, but everyone knew that was a lie. John told me to take care of papa and disappeared. I didn’t see him again for four years.”

  “Did he tell you he deserted? Just before the Langley Raid. He was supposed to be running overwatch for my team. The operative who replaced him was cut in half by a tactical laser.”

  “He told me his flirtation with ideology was over. He had… other interests these days. I know he felt regret, especially about your wife. But he also said his many brushes with death had cured him of any suicidal impulses.” She met my gaze squarely. “He also said you were most likely going to kill him one day. He protected you because he wanted a friend to be the one who pulled the trigger.”

  “I am not his friend.” I glanced over at Janet, now scanning the McIntosh watercolours with her smart. “Got it all?”

  “Oh yes.”

  I rose from the couch. I could have kept at it for hours, pushing until she spilt something useful, but somehow knew it would be a fruitless exercise. I’d put a surveillance team on her in the unlikely event Mr Mac turned up again. Also probably pointless; he’d know I’d been here and darling sis was now off limits.

  “You won’t be seeing him again,” I said. “Unless it’s via a visiting room window.”

  She stared up at me, eyes moist now. “You know he won’t let that happen.”

  “I do.”

  “He’s a bad man. I know he has done awful and unforgivable things. But I’ve never been able to hate him.” She blinked and a tear traced down her familiar cheekbone. “I guess we have that in common, Inspector.”

  Chapter 9

  “She wasn’t lying,” Janet said, reading her smart. “About the Mackintoshes. All purchased at public auction in the last decade. Anonymous bidder in every case, as you might expect.”

  I nodded, saying nothing and watching the cartoon playing out on the tunnel wall beyond the pipe carriage window. The Yin-side pipe network had hand-drawn animation cells every ten yards so that as the carriage streaked by the passengers were treated to a comic vignette or two. This one was vaguely recognisable, a recreation of some ancient 2D in which a cat and a mouse were locked in endless slapstick conflict, some of it insanely violent. Is that how he sees us? I wondered as the cat took yet another mallet to the head. Me chasing around after him forever. The cunning mouse always out-thinking the dumb but relentless cat.

  “She wasn’t entirely honest though,” Janet went on. “About the amicable divorce, I mean.”

  “Hubby turned up dead after all?”

  “No, but court records show he contested the pre-nup, on grounds of mental cruelty inflicted by his wife’s continual and flagrant adultery. Seems Oksana wasn’t shy about pursuing her recreational activities. Rich people get bored, I guess. Weird thing is, hubby drops his suit only two days after filing it and quickly finds himself a job down the well.”

  “Big bro looking out for little sis. I doubt she asked him to.”

  “For a psychopathic personality he seems to have a bit of a sentimental streak.”

  “Yeah, and I once arrested a multiple rapist who was very nice to his pet parakeet. Sentimentality doesn’t mean shit.”

  My smart buzzed out the urgent chirp of a Department call, Leyla’s ID flashing on the screen. “Yeah?” I said, ignoring Janet’s grin.

  “Struck lucky with the goon hunt, boss,” Leyla said. “Found Ignacio Fuentes holed up in a laundry on Yang Six. The owner snitched him out, think he’s tired of the pizza boxes piling up.”

  “Good. I’ll have a covert surveillance team there in an hour. Get Timor to put it out, his snitch network’s better than mine. Besides, if it comes from me Mr Mac will know it’s a set-up.”

  “OK. One other thing. The Rybak case, that phrase you wanted me to research.”

  “You got something?”

  “No firm point of origin but it did flag up on a Downside homicide this AM. Mass shooting on one of those aquatic habs. Looks pretty nasty, over a dozen killed. The local Demons took the perp down. I’m linking to a vid that captured the whole thing. He’s shouting the same thing Rybak said just before Corvin did his wolfman act.”

  From light we are born to light we return.

  “I’m thinking some kind of murder cult,” Leyla was saying. “Buncha loons get together on the net and plan the ultimate killing spree. If so, we’ll see more of these.”

  “It’s a possibility,” I said. “Leave it with me. Concentrate on Fuentes.”

  “Sure. But promise me I’ll be lead when we work this other thing.”

  I heard Janet suppress a giggle and said, “Not in the promises game, Inspector. Get to work.”

  I placed a Pol-net contact request to the lead investigator on the Downside killing spree and glanced up to see Janet’s reflection in the carriage window, still giggling.

  Riviera had named her the Ag
uila, a title that didn’t quite match her appearance. She was a converted military surplus Samson Class freighter, bulked out with enlarged plasma nacelles and an expanded cargo bay that did little to enhance her brutally functional looks. Riviera had cashed in his entire savings portfolio to buy her, even then he only managed to meet the asking price thanks to a loan from yours truly. It wasn’t an entirely altruistic gesture; I had a favour to ask at the time.

  “Still can’t get used to it,” Lucy said, greeting me at the cargo bay ramp with a warm hug before drawing back, frowning as she scanned my face. “Admit it, you were way hotter as a scumbag.”

  “This is Janet,” I said, stepping back. “Janet, meet Lucy, pilot and first mate of the Aguila.”

  “So I finally get to meet the missus, huh?” Lucy ignored Janet’s hand to give her a hug of her own.

  “Not quite,” Janet told her, offering a sympathetic smile as Lucy released her. “Sorry for your loss. Ceres must have been a terrible experience for all involved.”

  “It’s OK,” I told Lucy as she frowned, unsure of how to respond. She had been left in absolutely no doubt about the consequences of ever speaking about Ceres. “She does that.” I nodded at the open cargo bay. “He in?”

  “’Course.” She turned and started up the ramp, gesturing for us to follow. “He hardly ever leaves the ship when we’re in dock.”

  “It’s all over.” Riviera had taken on a few additional mods since Janet last met him, sturdier prosthetics to cope with life outside the forgiving micro-grav of the Axis and a miniature lidar array grafted onto his sonar eye-implants so he could see in vacuum. It was all second-hand tech, a couple of years behind the state-of-the-art, making him resemble a human personification of his ship; a patched up old warhorse refusing to retire. He sat at the flight-engineer’s station in the Aguila’s cramped bridge, miniature soldering iron in hand and one of his legs in his lap as he tinkered with a servo on the knee joint.

  “Over and done, years ago,” he went on, barely glancing up. “What good will raking it up do?”