*
“See it?” Ricci pointed a gloved finger at a patch of slightly discoloured skin.
I shrugged. “Not really.”
“Needle mark. Easy to miss, if you’re not me.” He eased the corpse over onto its back. European appearance, mid-twenties, extensive blunt-force trauma and penetrative injuries to the face and torso.
“Bruises don’t look post-mortem,” Sherry Mordecai observed. She wasn’t looking at the body. She was glaring at me over the autopsy table and she wasn’t happy.
“Syteline on the needle,” Ricci told her. “Paralysing agent. Somebody froze our boy up before doing all this.”
“Easy to come by?” I asked.
“Syteline? Shit no. Fast acting synthetic weaponised compound. Strictly controlled and very expensive. Haven’t seen it since the war. Federal Black Ops types liked to use it when they disappeared someone.”
“ID?” Sherry asked.
“No documents found. No make on any database. His prints are grafts though so I guess he’s been a bad boy somewhere along the line. DNA sequencing indicates a high probability he originates from the Mediterranean basin.” Ricci paused, he always tries for dramatic effect when he can. “Specifically southern Sicily. Can anyone else smell spaghetti and meatballs?”
“They don’t come here,” I said. “There’s a treaty.”
“With Mr Mac?” Sherry asked.
“Yeah,” I grated, more forcefully than I intended. “With Mr Mac.”
Sherry bit down her anger and turned to Ricci. “What about the other two?”
“Same thing. Syteline needle to the neck, extensive injuries to the upper body. I’m guessing a low velocity dart gun.”
Three precisely placed shots in barely two seconds to put them all down so quickly. Using a weaponised compound favoured by Federal Black Ops no less. This wasn’t shaping up well.
“Did manage to ID them, though,” Ricci went on, calling up files on his wall screen. “No-one you’ve ever heard of. Fairly long entries on CrimInt, violent assaults and robberies in their youth, numerous criminal associations and a few drug busts as they grew into fully fledged gang-members. Affiliated with one of the more high-end Yang Ten crews. CrimInt says they tend to sub-contract a lot, security and courier services.”
“Take a team to the crime scene,” Sherry told him. “Full work-up. See if anything got missed. Alex, let’s talk.”
*
The Bosnian café near the morgue sold cevapi - chopped up sausage meat in pitta bread with a yoghurt dressing. Sherry loved the stuff but I always found it a little bland. We sat next to the window, the blue holo-sign outside making her scars stand out, red and angry. There were four of them, traced across her face like badly drawn tiger stripes, the legacy of some wartime escapade she never talked about. She’d been a marine, an archaic term adopted by the poor bastards who put on armoured pressure suits and tried to fight their way into Fed ships and defence stations. Their casualty rate had been predictably appalling and the few survivors tended not to bother with reunions.
“You got a take on this?” Sherry asked around a mouthful of sausage and pitta.
“Hand-over gone wrong and Mr Mac’s got the contract to clean up the mess.” It’s what he does, Mr Mac. He deals no drugs, doesn’t steal, doesn’t smuggle. All societies require rules and the enforcement of rules, criminal society being no exception. That’s the service he provides and anyone who does business on the Slab is required to put him on retainer. It’s not just a protection racket, it’s a genuine insurance policy, for times like this.
“Hand-over?” Sherry said. “The girl you mean?”
“What else?”
“Child prostitution? Organ trafficking?”
I shook my head. “Plenty of home grown fodder for that. This is something new.”
She washed down a mouthful with a gulp of Dragon Fire, the only beverage produced on the Slab that could rightfully lay claim to the title of beer. “We’re handing this off to the SOCU.”
Specialist Organised Crime Unit. A parade of time-servers with an average case turnaround of three years if you were lucky. I took out Mr Mac’s smart and called up the little girl’s image, placing it on the table between us, her sad face revolving in slow accusation. Sherry gave it the briefest of glances.
“I don’t like you dealing with that evil piece of shit,” she said. “I especially don’t like you meeting him face to face with no back-up.”
“He’d never kill me, you know that.”
She snorted. “Code of honour bullshit.”
“No, I saved his life a few times true enough, but it’s more than that. He genuinely believes we’re friends. Probably thinks my repeated attempts to take him down are just a bad patch we’re working through.”
Sherry took another pull of Dragon Fire and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “There’s something else, had a call from Professional Standards.”
I straightened up a little. My welcoming attitude to life-threatening experiences gives me a generalised immunity to most fears, but to any Slab City Demon the words Professional Standards always provoke a certain unease.
“If it’s about Nielson, he was dead when I got there…”
“Not that. You made a large cash withdrawal from your personal account two days ago. You know they profile stuff like that.”
Doc Owuga’s twenty grand. Should’ve taken it out in smaller batches.
“There’s an innocent explanation, I’m sure,” Sherry pressed.
“My face,” I said.
“Ah.” She sat back, beer bottle clasped in both hands, eyes appraising. She’d never seen the old me, our working relationship was entirely post-war and if perfect male beauty ever stirred her womanly loins she’d been expert in not showing it. “You’d have to go Downside for that.” No judgement, no surprise. I remembered she knew what it was like to carry a disfigurement.
“Yeah,” I evaded, knowing my consult with Doc Owuga wouldn’t go down well and she was sufficiently pissed at me already. I gestured at the holo. “So?”
She gave the girl another brief glance. “I’ll give you a day. Then we’re handing it off. Need anything?”
“Yeah, I need to borrow Joe.”
*
I found Joe cleaning up after the regular bi-monthly riot on Yang Eighteen. At first glance he seemed like an unusually large Demon in riot gear, dragging narc-gassed suspects to the holding pens with barely any sign of exertion, but look closer and the splice heritage was obvious. The cut-price desplicer I’d hooked him up to had given out after only three months, taking the fur and claws but leaving him with patches of discoloured skin on his face and most of his body, plus an enlarged musculature and prominent canines. I’d offered to send him to the African Fed to complete the treatment but he refused, said I’d done enough already. With his impeccably forged new identity, plus a personal recommendation from me, it had been easy to find him a place on the riot squad. Six months in he was already a Section Leader.
“Inspector!” he greeted me as I picked my way through the inert bodies littering the main concourse.
“Joe.” I waved a hand at the carnage. “What was it this time? Politics or religion?”
“Worse, economics.” Joe heaved the two unconscious rioters over the temporary shock fence and onto the growing pile of compadres beyond. “The Level Council raised the housing maintenance rate by half a percent. Doesn’t take much to kick things off round here.”
“How about a little holiday? Got a case and I need some back-up. Chief Inspector Mordecai cleared it with Commander Kurtz.”
Joe smiled, showing a wall of brilliant white enamel and for a moment it was like he’d stepped out of one of his ads from the old days, when he was a champion and the whole world knew his name. “You know you don’t have to ask.”
“It’s only polite. Get changed, civilian gear, and put this on.” I tossed him a Sig newly drawn from the armoury.
Joe regarded the Sig with a mixture of
distaste and contempt. “Don’t go much for guns.”
“Regulations, Constable. See you at the Pipe in ten minutes.”
*
We started in the most obvious places. Contrary to popular fiction, police work is largely a matter of pursuing the obvious. The Slab was home to a few specialised human-trafficking gangs, some with a sideline in supplying children. It’s a ruthless and grimly efficient aspect of organised criminality and none too easy for someone like me to trawl for intel on a missing girl. Luckily, I had a few well-placed informants who prized continued good health and liberty above prudent silence. A few hours intimidating our way through the grubbier corners of the lower Yangs and it was clear that whoever had the girl wasn’t interested in channelling her to a niche market brothel or porn studio.
I took a call from Ricci having just finished turning up squat on Yang Ten. I’d hoped to extract some intel from the compadres of the two gang-members for hire who’d died alongside Mr Spaghetti and Meatballs. Sadly their gang-mates had disappeared themselves as soon as the news broke, leaving only blank faced hangers on and relieved shop owners who didn’t have to cough up protection money any more.
“Just finished the work-up on the crime scene,” Ricci said. “It’s pretty clean but I did find an interesting trace sample.” My smart showed some kind of molecular diagram, donut shapes swirling about each other in a lazy dance.
“Been a while since chemistry class, Ricci,” I said. “Looks like blood.”
“It is, but with a difference. Look.” Ricci zoomed in on a red blood cell revealing small, yellowish protrusions on the surface.
“What is that?” I asked. “Some kind of blood disease?”
“Nah, it’s diacorteline, in inert form so it won’t show up on a blood test. Only picked it up cos I ran a visual scan. It’s present in every cell in the sample.”
“Diacorteline?” Joe asked.
“Blues to you and me,” I said.
Bliss and Blues are the principal drugs of choice on the Slab. Bliss will send you to heaven on a wave of ecstasy. Blues puts you on a slow burn of pain free oblivion. The thinking junkie’s drug.
“Is it extractable?” I asked Ricci.
“Sure. Run it through a standard blood cleanser and add acetic acid. Voila, usable, saleable Blues.”
I sounded off. A Blues and blood compound. Something new alright. There was someone who knew the Blues trafficking world a lot better than I did but I owed her enough favours already.
“Shit,” I sighed, making for the Pipe.
“Where to?” Joe enquired.
“Joe, my friend, prepare yourself for a trip to the Heavenly Garden.”
*
The place was early-afternoon empty save for a few endurance athlete drunks. Marco was keeping bar with heavy-browed concentration.
“Inspector,” he said in his too precise and overly loud voice. There was a multiple scraping of chairs as the remaining patrons decided to take their custom elsewhere.
“Where is she?” I enquired as Marco poured the Glenlivet, two glasses.
“Upstairs.” He stoppered the bottle and stepped back, brow creasing further as he considered his options. “I’ll tell her you’re here.” With that he stomped off towards the stairs.
I took a sip of scotch and gestured for Joe to follow suit. “It’s the only free drink you’ll get working with me.”
Joe seemed distracted, head angled, eyes closed. “Prefer Bourbon. You hear that?”
“What?” I couldn’t hear anything but empty bar and muffled street noise.
“Someone’s singing.” A faint smile played on his lips. “Beautiful.”
A door opened upstairs and there was a brief snatch of vocal melody, pure and resonant. Joe was right, it was beautiful. The rumble of Marco’s voice cut through the song shortly followed by Choi’s answering bark. She sounded pissed. A brief pause then the heavy plod of Marco descending the stairs. “Be right down,” he reported before taking his usual place by the door.
“Bourbon,” I informed Joe, “is a bastardisation of my heritage.”
“Scotch is the Devil’s privy water. My grandma always said so. She should know, drank herself to death on Kentucky Red before she hit fifty.”
Choi appeared after a few minutes, all dragon lady elegance as usual. “Inspector,” she gave a short bow.
“Choi, this is Joe. A colleague.”
“Yes.” Choi’s smile was flinty. “He stole my rat.” Despliced or not, she never forgot a face.
“Liberated you mean,” Joe rumbled.
“Play nice kids,” I cautioned. “We’re all friends here.”
Choi inclined her head, moving behind the bar and pouring me another measure of scotch.
“You auditioning?” I asked.
Her porcelain smooth brow creased a little. “Your pardon?”
“The singing. Joe was quite taken with it.”
“Ah.” She blinked. “Merely an old recording. I like to listen to music when organising my accounts.”
“Right.” I paused a little before reaching for the recharged glass. All the years I’d been coming here, there had been no music. No piped in crap-pop, no jukebox, no performers. Just the soft aria of alcoholic despair punctuated with the occasional drum roll of violence.
“How may I serve, Inspector?” Choi enquired in her perfectly faked Mandarin-tinged tones.
“Anything new in the Blues world? Big splashes and ripples. You know the kind of thing.”
“As far as I can tell the balance is in order. Gangs trade, co-operate, kill each other and profit accordingly. No one group ascends above the others for long. No leader endures beyond a few months. The balance is in order.”
“Nothing recent? Rumours of a big buy maybe? Something new coming up the well?”
“There is talk of a substantial purchase tonight. I was approached with a view to contributing a portion of the purchase price. I declined as my current stocks are sufficient.”
Joe shifted a little, uncomfortable with her frankness. The other informants we’d visited today had all displayed the requisite amount of reluctance or obfuscation. But Choi wasn’t really an informant, she was a career criminal who spoke to me without fear of arrest because I owed her a favour and we were useful to each other.
“Where?” I asked.
She reached for a notepad and scribbled down the details. Choi had a healthy aversion to electronic media. “Security will be tight,” she cautioned, handing over the note. “The groups involved are very professional.”
“Then they’ll see the value in coming quietly.” I threw back the rest of the scotch. “What d’you call that song anyway? The old recording?”
“Redemption Song,” Joe said. “Bob Marley. Favourite of my grandma’s.”
“Kentucky Red grandma?”
“Nah. Grandma Deane, my dad’s mom. Used to be a musician. Never seen so many tattoos on an old lady.”
I pushed back from the bar. “Ersatz daylight’s burning and desperadoes await justice. Later Matsuke.”
She barely flinched when I used her real name. Normally I could see her biting down the anger. “A true friend is always welcome, Inspector,” she said with a smile.
I was out on the street before it hit me. Her smile actually had some warmth in it.
*
The buy was set for 7 pm at an abandoned manufacturing plant on Yang Thirty, a mostly derelict level sparsely occupied by vagrants and rats. Prime drug deal territory. Sherry was able to scramble a SWAT team at short notice and we set up on the level ceiling, micro-cling gloves and knee-pads sticking us to the crete, kitted out in thermal-masking stealth suits and night vision gear. All very ninja. Sherry had opted to assume the role of Team Leader. I wondered if she was missing her marine days or keen to keep tabs on me.
“Got ten suspects on the plot,” Sergeant Manahi reported over the scrambled net. “All armed. Eight on perimeter security, two inside.”
Buyers or sellers? I wondered
surveying the grey-green silhouettes below. They were all disappointingly adult-sized, no little girls, huddled and awaiting rescue.
“Movement,” one of the SWATs reported. “Five more approaching from Quad Delta.” A pause. “No children in sight.”
“Could still be in there,” I said. “Concealed maybe.”
“Hold until they get inside,” Sherry ordered. “We don’t bother waiting for the hand-over on this one. Remember, tazers only, exercise extreme caution. Possible infant in danger.”
I hung from the ceiling in a lateral pose, repelling cables hooked up and ready to go, watching the newcomers approach the block, a brief exchange with the guard on the door then two went inside, the three others lingering on the street, good spacing, loose formation, eyes constantly scanning. Choi was right; professionals.
“OK,” Sherry said. “As per the briefing I’m primary infiltrator. Sergeant Manahi is secondary. Alex, Joe, clean and sweep for the girl. Let’s go.”
I punched the button on my chest and went into rapid descent. The height of every Slab level is a standard two hundred metres. Experience has taught SWAT over the years that to have a reasonable chance of taking down a group of armed suspects you had to cover the distance in under three seconds. In practice this means a dizzying 110kph fall to the floor followed by a jarring, just soft enough not to dislocate your lumbar vertebrae, deceleration.
I juddered to a halt five feet above a perimeter guard with an Ingram 5mm under his jacket. He was just starting to glance up when the tazer dart smacked into his cheekbone. I hit the quick release and landed astride his twitching body, looking round to see Joe choking another guard unconscious, meaty arms wrapped tight around his neck and mouth until he spasmed and went limp. Joe dropped the guard, caught my reproving eye and gave a silent shrug. Don’t go much for guns.
We sprinted for the main entrance amidst the multiple phut phut of the SWAT team’s tazers as they took down the remaining guards. Inside it was already over, two unconscious forms on the floor and another two disarmed and cuffed, wincing from Sherry’s none too gentle interrogation.
“Where is she?” she demanded, holding up the holo of the little girl and handing out painful cuffs when she didn’t get an answer.