Xenopath - [Bengal Station 02]

by Eric Brown

  “And?”

  “And one angle we have to consider is this: what if Scheering-Lassiter are behind the assassinations?”

  He nodded. “Certainly Mulraney thought they were hiding something. And the fact that every last one of their employees is shielded...”

  “Perhaps we should try looking a bit further into Scheering-Lassiter?”

  “Easier said than done,” Vaughan grunted. “Any ideas?”

  “Two ways we could go about this, Vaughan. One of us goes to Mallory, does some rooting around there.”

  “And the other way?” he asked. He didn’t much care for the idea of leaving Sukara, taking a void-ship to a company-run planet.

  “We read a Scheering-Lassiter high up, try to find out what’s going on.”

  “Like I said, they’re all shielded.”

  “I know they are. I’ve been doing a bit of my own nosing around the S-L empire. And they don’t use just portable shields.”

  “Sub-cutes?”

  She nodded. “They’re implanted as part of the signing on deal when you become a S-L employee. They have fingers in a lot of pies—they don’t want competitors reading their best personnel. It’s established practice now among the big multicolonials.”

  “So how do we go about reading a Scheering-Lassiter executive if they’re all shielded?”

  “How else, Vaughan? We unshield the bastard.”

  Vaughan nodded. “You make it sound like stealing candy from a baby.”

  She regarded him. She had a sharp way of piercing him with her steel grey eyes, making him feel as if he’d said something stupid.

  “Harder than that,” Kapinsky allowed, “but not impossible.”

  “You’ve obviously been giving it a lot of thought.”

  “Been doing nothing but for most of yesterday. First consideration is, who to target?”

  “Some exec in the Mallory department,” Vaughan said. “I talked to a woman called Gita Singh.”

  Kapinsky nodded. “She’s the Co-Director of the Mallory division.” She paused, thinking about it. “Or we could go right to the top and get Scheering himself. He lives on the Station. He’s a big celebrity, thick with all the politicians, greasing palms. Trouble is, he has more security guards around him than flies on a turd.”

  “So who, then?”

  “The Director of the Mallory division is a guy called Anton Denning. He spends half his time on Mallory. At the moment he’s on Earth. Specifically, on the Station.”

  “You think this is the guy we should target?” She was, he realised, serious about this.

  “That’s the guy, Vaughan. If anyone knows something about what Scheering’s hiding on Mallory, and why he hired an assassin to take out Kormier and Travers, Denning’s the guy.”

  “Okay, fine, so Denning it is. He’s also the guy wearing a subcutaneous mind-shield.”

  Kapinsky sneered. “No probs, Vaughan. They’re implanted here—” she tapped her chest just above her right breast. “A quick slice with a scalpel, a squeeze, and they slip out as easy as pie.”

  Vaughan massaged his eyes. “Can I ask a few questions, Kapinsky? Things you might have overlooked in you sudden enthusiasm to cut up a Station citizen?”

  “I’ve gone over every angle. Fire away.”

  “First off, have you noticed that just about every square metre of the Station is covered by surveillance cams these days? So even if we did lure this Denning character to a blind spot, what’re the chances we’d have avoided cams tracking us to wherever the blind spot is?”

  Kapinsky was smiling, as if the word “smug” were her private property.

  “What?” Vaughan asked.

  “Like I said, I’ve got every angle covered. Denning goes into the S-L building around ten every morning. He employs a firm who supply chauffeur-driven air-cars. They pick him up at nine-forty-five on the dot.”

  Vaughan thought he saw what she was driving at. “And?”

  “We hire a swish flier. I drive, get there two minutes earlier, and we have our man.”

  Vaughan restrained his smile. “So, there we are, we’ve got our man in the back of the flier. What then?”

  “Then I simply turn around before we set off and spray Denning with a face full of atomised sedative. I pick you up, you slice the guy and remove his shield—they’re effective a metre away from the subject, so we stow it in the dash—then we read Denning’s head and all the secrets he keeps there.”

  Vaughan spread his hands. “Then how do we explain what we’ve done to the cops when Denning files a kidnap and assault suit on us?”

  “He doesn’t. You see, he doesn’t find out that his shield was removed. He doesn’t even dream we read his head. When we’ve done, we substitute his shield with something the same size, just in case we need to read him in future. Then seal the wound with synthi-flesh and take his wallet to make the assault look like robbery.”

  “And how do we get away?”

  “Simple. We ditch the flier, and Denning with it, in a blind spot and leave the area on foot—”

  “Allowing all the surveillance cams in the vicinity to get a good long look at us.”

  Kapinsky smiled. “We’ll be wearing chus, Vaughan. We’ll lose ourselves in the crowds, run around a level or two, remove the chus and come up smelling of roses.”

  Vaughan nodded. “And if Denning knows anything about what Scheering is hiding on Mallory, we’ll have it all in here.” He tapped his head.

  “That’s about the size of it, Jeff.” Kapinsky looked at him. “So... what do you think?”

  He held up a hand. “Just give me time to think this through, okay? I mean, it isn’t every day I’m asked to kidnap a company exec like this, slice him open, and read his mind.”

  Kapinsky said, “The end justifies the means, buddy. Now and again you gotta break the law to solve a crime.”

  He nodded. Two years ago he’d attacked the then head of the Law Enforcement agency and cut his shield from his chest. The circumstances had been different, then—he’d known the guy was corrupt. This time, he and Kapinsky merely suspected that Denning knew something.

  “Well?” Kapinsky prompted.

  “It might work, as a last resort.”

  “A last resort?” she sneered. “You got any brighter ideas?”

  “How about we spend a couple more days tracking this assassin? If we find him, then we find out what all this is about.”

  “Always assuming we can trace the bastard,” she said.

  “Two days,” Vaughan said. “After that, we seriously think about ambushing Denning. What do you say?”

  Her reply was interrupted by her handset. “Kapinsky here.”

  Vaughan heard the tinny voice of her caller. Kapinsky stared at the screen of her handset. “No kidding? You sure about that?”

  Her caller replied.

  “Okay. We’re on our way.” She cut the connection and looked across at Vaughan. “That was Sergeant Kulpa. They’ve found the guy who killed Kormier and Travers. Officially the case is closed.”

  Vaughan stared at her. “Who is he?”

  “Kulpa didn’t say. But he did say the guy’s dead.”

  Vaughan took this in. “Okay, but if he was a hired assassin, then his death doesn’t close the case. We need to know who hired him.”

  She nodded. “Let’s go take a look, Vaughan.”

  * * * *

  FOURTEEN

  NECROPATH

  They left the office and took an air-taxi east.

  There were a lot of very expensive apartments on the sunrise side of the Station, as far down as Level Five. The outer pads on Level Two were usually rented by politicians and business tycoons, not assassins.

  The unimaginatively named Sunrise Villas projected from the side of the Station in a series of steps, so that each four-bedroom apartment had long windows giving onto a garden area situated on top of the apartment below.

  The flier came down over the lip of the Station and banked out over th
e ocean. A Scene of Crime team was at work on the patio of the uppermost villa. The flier eased to a gentle landing with a whine of turbos, and Vaughan climbed out.

  The garden was the size of a skyball court, with a brilliant blue swimming pool, an ornamental garden, and half a dozen sun-loungers set out on a patio.

  The SoC team was concentrating on a body on one of the loungers.

  Kulpa indicated the corpse. The dead man was perhaps in his late thirties and European. “Sven Nordquist,” Kulpa said. “A European national. He’d been on the Station a little over a year.”

  A neat hole—Vaughan was unable to tell whether it had been made by a bullet or a laser—marked the man’s right temple. He lay in the lounger, arms dangling, mouth slightly open. But for the entry point, Nordquist might have been sleeping.

  Then Vaughan saw the automatic pistol on the tiles, inches below the guy’s dangling hand.

  “Suicide?” Kapinsky said.

  Kulpa nodded. “Around seven this morning. The shot was heard by the owner of the villa two below this one. She called the villas’ private security team, who called us in.”

  “You’re certain it was suicide?”

  “The apartment door’s locked from the inside. The apartment below this one is locked, so no one could have got in through there.”

  Kapinsky indicated the lip of the station, high above. “What about over there?”

  “I’ve had a man check the security cams—not a thing. Forensic’s certain the wound was self-inflicted.”

  Vaughan said, “What makes you think this is the guy we were looking for?”

  Kulpa nodded. “Come this way,” he said, indicating the sliding glass panel of the viewscreen.

  They stepped inside. The room was vast and minimally furnished, a white mock-leather suite lost amid an expanse of cream floor tiles. There was no sign that Nordquist had stamped his personality on the place—either that, or his personality had been as bland as the decor.

  Kapinsky said, “So who was Nordquist?”

  “A small-time businessman, import-export from Europe to the Station. We have reason to believe that his business wasn’t doing so well.”

  He led them over to a desk in the corner of the room. Its surface was scattered with printouts and a photograph showing three figures sitting at a restaurant table, smiling at the camera. One of the men was Nordquist.

  Vaughan recognised the other two: Kormier and Travers.

  “It was taken a month ago, on the occasion of their last meeting.” Kulpa indicated a personal com-diary on the desk. “We’ve been through this. Kormier and Travers were lending Nordquist money to bale him out of a series of bad business deals he’d made a while back.”

  “How much?” Kapinsky asked.

  “They each loaned him a quarter of a million.”

  “Baht?”

  “Dollars.”

  Kapinsky whistled. “Some loan. And you think Nordquist killed the guys who were bailing him out?”

  “An entry in the diary,” Kulpa said, “about two weeks ago. Kormier and Travers were asking Nordquist when they might see their loan repaid. Nordquist was stalling them.”

  Vaughan said, “So he planned the ultimate stall, and killed them both?”

  Kulpa opened the top drawer of the desk, revealing a small laser pistol. “A Kulatov MkII blaser. The same type which killed Kormier and Travers.”

  Kapinsky said, “I want a copy of the diary, and the SoC report.”

  Kulpa smiled. “I thought you might.” He passed her a pin. “This is a download of the diary. I’ll get you the SoC report as soon as they’ve made it.” He hesitated, then said, “I was talking to my superior. This was your case, and you were on your usual rate of commission if you cracked it.”

  “Looks like Nordquist did us out of it,” Kapinsky said.

  Kulpa shook his head. “My boss thinks you did enough to earn the commission. He suspects Nordquist knew you were after him. It might’ve been one of the things that pushed him over the edge.”

  A member of the SoC team looked in through the viewscreen and called Kulpa.

  “Excuse me,” the cop said, leaving Vaughan and Kapinsky in the lounge.

  “Well, what do you know,” Kapinsky said, “we get the twenty thousand without getting our hands dirty.”

  Vaughan stared at her. “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”

  She looked at him. “Come again, Vaughan?”

  “This?” He indicated the desk. “The diary entry. The supposed loan. The pix. It’s too neat. You know what I think?”

  “I’ve a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  “It’s a set up, a buy out. The cops have been conned, either knowingly or not. Kulpa probably believes all this—but his superior’s in on it. Why else do you think he’s given us the commission? To shut us up, for Chrissake.”

  “And who do you think’s behind the cover-up?”

  “Come on. Who else? Scheering-fucking-Lassiter, that’s who.”

  “And Nordquist?”

  “Some poor schmuck chosen as the decoy by the real assassin. And this,” he said, snatching up the pix of the three men, “you’ll probably find is a very clever fake.”

  “The case is closed, Vaughan. We’ve been paid.”

  “Paid off,” Vaughan said. He stared at her. “You’re not going to sit back, take their money, and forget about who killed Kormier and Travers, are you?”

  Kapinsky sighed. “We’re dealing with a professional, Vaughan. And, what’s more, a pro with multicolonial backing.”

  “Christ, and not one hour ago you were all for slicing this Denning exec and seeing what he knew about Mallory. Listen, it’s all the more important that we do that, now.”

  “You’ve changed your tune, Vaughan.”

  “Too right I have. Back then we were going on a hunch.”

  “And we aren’t now?” Kapinsky said. “Seems to me your conspiracy theory is just so much guesswork, Vaughan.”

  He thought about it. “Okay, let’s not jump into anything. I’ll do some investigating. If I find something that points to Nordquist being an innocent party in all this, then we see what Denning and Scheering are hiding, okay?”

  Kapinsky held his gaze. “For what, Vaughan? We’ve been paid. So we find out that Scheering’s behind the killings, what do we gain?”

  Vaughan shook his head. “Call me naive, but we gain the satisfaction of bringing criminals to justice, of righting a wrong.”

  “You sound like some kid’s superhero,” Kapinsky said. “So we find out that Scheering hired an assassin, that he’s covering up something on some far away colony planet. It’s not our ballpark, Vaughan. Get real. We’re bit-part players. We do what we’re paid for, keep our noses clean with those in power, and get on with our little lives.”

  “You don’t know how fucking cynical that sounds, Kapinsky.”

  She stared at him. “It sounds,” she said, “like the Vaughan I knew, once upon a time.”

  “Yeah, well, that Vaughan’s dead and gone,” he said. He let a silence stretch. “So... there’s nothing I can do to persuade you to look a bit further into this?”

  Kapinsky sighed. “Vaughan, we’re beat. Let’s give up before we find ourselves in deep shit, okay?”

  Kulpa looked into the room. “If you’ve a minute...”

  As they joined him on the patio, Vaughan activated his handset and scanned Kulpa. The sergeant was on the level—he was merely taking orders to close the case from his divisional commander.

  He killed his implant and stared up into the blue sky. A private air-car was banking over the edge of the Station, a sleek silver coupe with a grin like a shark. An insect-wing door hinged open and a tall woman hauled herself out of the low-slung driver’s seat.

  Kapinsky said, “Who’s this?”

  “Indira Javinder,” Kulpa replied. “She’s another of your lot working on the case.”

  “Our lot?” Kapinsky echoed, eyeing him.

 
“A telepath.”

  Vaughan watched the woman as she strode around the shimmering pool, and he wondered where he’d heard the name before.

  She was, he had to admit, striking: so tall as to appear attenuated, as thin as an off-worlder from some low-grav planet, and dressed to maximise the effect in a one-piece jet black bodysuit and a tri-corne perched on the back of her shaven skull.