China Mieville

by The City

  “Could be. No one understands me. I didn’t ask to be born.” She had no memories of the book, in particular.

  “I cannot fucking believe this,” Corwi said when I called her and told her. She kept repeating it.

  “I know. That’s what I told Gadlem.”

  “They’re taking me off the case?”

  “I don’t think there’s a ‘they.’ But unfortunately, yes, no, you can’t come.”

  “So that’s it? I’m just dropped off?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Son of a bitch. The question,” she said after a minute we’d spent without saying anything, only listening to each other’s silence and breath, like teenagers in love, “is who would have released that footage. No, the question is how did they find that footage? Why? How many fucking hours of tape are there, how many cameras? Since when do they have the time to go through that shit? Why this one time?”

  “I don’t have to leave immediately. I’m just thinking … I’ve got my orientation the day after tomorrow …”

  “So?”

  “Well.”

  “So?”

  “Sorry, I’ve been thinking this through. About this footage that’s just slapped us upside the head. Do you want to do a last little investigating? Couple of phone calls and a visit or two. There’s one thing in particular I have to sort out before my visa and whatnot comes through—I’ve been thinking about that van swanning over to foreign lands. This could get you in trouble.” I said this last jokingly, as if it were something appealing. “Of course you’re off the case, now, so it’s a bit unauthorised.” That wasn’t true. She was in no danger—I could okay anything she did. I might get in trouble but she would not.

  “Fuck, yes, then,” she said. “If authority’s stiffing you, unauthorised is all you’ve got.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “YES?” Mikyael Khurusch looked at me more closely from behind the door to his shabby office. “Inspector. It’s you. What… Hello?”

  “Mr. Khurusch. Small point.”

  “Let us in, please, sir,” Corwi said. He opened the door wider to see her, too, sighed and opened to us.

  “How can I help you?” He clasped, unclasped his hands.

  “Doing okay without your van?” Corwi said.

  “It’s a pain in the arse, but a friend’s helping me out.”

  “Good of him.”

  “Isn’t it?” Khurusch said.

  “When did you get an AQD visa for your van, Mr. Khurusch?” I said.

  “I, what, what?” he said. “I don’t, I have no—”

  “Interesting that you stall like that,” I said. His response verified the guess. “You’re not so stupid as to out-and-out deny it, because, hey, passes are matters of record. But then what are we asking for? And why aren’t you just answering? What’s the trouble with that question?”

  “Can we see your pass, please, Mr. Khurusch?”

  He looked at Corwi several seconds.

  “It’s not here. It’s at my house. Or—”

  “Shall we not?” I said. “You’re lying. That was a little last chance for you, courtesy of us, and oh, you pissed it up a wall. You don’t have your pass. A visa, Any Qualified Driver, for multiple entry-reentry into and out of Ul Qoma. Right? And you don’t have it because it’s been stolen. It was stolen when your van was stolen. It was, in fact, in your van when your van was stolen, along with your antique street map.”

  “Look,” he said, “I’ve told you, I wasn’t there, I don’t have a street map, I have GPS on my phone. I don’t know anything—”

  “Not true, but true that your alibi checks out. Understand, no one here thinks you committed this murder, or even dumped the body. That’s not why we’re ticked off.”

  “Our concern,” Corwi said, “is that you never told us about the pass. The question is who took it, and what you got for it.” Colour left his face.

  “Oh God,” he said. His mouth worked several times and he sat down hard. “Oh God, wait. I had nothing to do with anything, I didn’t get anything …”

  I had watched the CCTV footage repeatedly. There had been no hesitation in the van’s passage, on that guarded and official route through Copula Hall. Far from breaching, slipping along a crosshatched street, or changing plates to match some counterfeit permission, the driver had had to show the border guards papers that raised no eyebrows. There was one kind of pass in particular that might have expedited so uncomplicated a journey.

  “Doing someone a favour?” I said. “An offer you couldn’t refuse? Blackmail? Leave the papers in the glove compartment. Better for them if you don’t know anything.”

  “Why else would you not tell us you’d lost your papers?” Corwi said.

  “One and only chance,” I said. “So. What’s the score?”

  “Oh God, look.” Khurusch looked longingly around. “Please, look. I know I should’ve taken the papers in from the van. I do normally, I swear to you, I swear. I must have forgotten this one time, and that’s the time the van gets stolen.”

  “That’s why you never told us about the theft, wasn’t it?” I said. “You never told us the van was stolen because you knew you’d have to tell us eventually about the papers, and so you just hoped the whole situation would sort itself out.”

  “Oh God.”

  Visiting Ul Qoman cars are generally easy to identify as visitors with rights of passage, with their licence plates, window stickers and modern designs: as are Besź cars in Ul Qoma, from their passes and their, to our neighbours, antiquated lines. Vehicular passes, particularly AQD multiple-entry, are neither cheap nor effortless to get hold of, and come hedged with conditions and rules. One of which is that a visa for a particular vehicle is never left unguarded in that vehicle. There’s no point making smuggling easier than it is. It is, though, a not-uncommon oversight, or crime, to leave such papers in glove compartments or under seats. Khurusch knew he was facing at the very least a large fine and the revocation of any travel rights to Ul Qoma forever.

  “Who did you give your van to, Mikyael?”

  “I swear to Christ, Inspector, no one. I don’t know who took it. I seriously do not know.”

  “Are you saying that it was total coincidence? That someone who needed to pick up a body from Ul Qoma just happened to steal a van with pass papers still in it, waiting? How handy.”

  “On my life, Inspector, I don’t know. Maybe whoever nicked the van found the papers and sold them to someone else …”

  “They found someone who needed trans-city transport the same night they stole it? These are the luckiest thieves ever.”

  Khurusch slumped. “Please,” he said. “Go through my bank accounts. Check my wallet. No one’s paying me dick. Since the van got taken I’ve not been able to do fucking anything, no business at all. I don’t know what to do …”

  “You’re going to make me cry,” said Corwi. He looked at her with a ragged expression.

  “On my life,” he said.

  “We’ve looked up your record, Mikyael,” I said. “I don’t mean your police record—that’s what we checked last time. I mean your record with the Besźel border patrol. You got random audited a few months after you first got a pass. A few years ago. We saw First Warning marks on several things, but the biggest by far was that you’d left the papers in the car. It was a car at the time, right? You’d left it in the glove compartment. How’d you get away with that one? I’m surprised they didn’t revoke it there and then.”

  “First offence,” he said. “I begged them. One of the guys who found it said he’d have a word with his mate and get it commuted to an official warning.”

  “Did you bribe him?”

  “Sure. I mean, something. I can’t remember how much.”

  “Why not? I mean, that’s how you got it in the first place, right? Why even bother?”

  A long silence. AQD vehicle passes are generally advertised as for businesses with a few more employees than Khurusch’s sketchy concern, but it is no
t uncommon for small traders to help their applications with a few dollars—Besźmarques being unlikely to move the Besź middlemen or issuing clerks at the Ul Qoman embassy.

  “In case,” he said hopelessly, “I ever needed help picking stuff up. My nephew’s done the test, couple of mates, could’ve driven it, helped me out. You never know.”

  “Inspector?” Corwi was looking at me. She’d said it more than once, I realised. “Inspector?” She glanced at Khurusch, What are we doing?

  “Sorry,” I said to her. “Just thinking.” I motioned her to follow me to the corner of the room, warning Khurusch with a pointed finger to stay put.

  “I’m going to take him in,” I said quietly, “but something’s … Look at him. I’m trying to work something out. Look, I want you to chase something up. As quick as you can, because tomorrow I’m going to have to go to this damn orientation, so I think tonight’s going to be a long night. Are you okay with that? What I want is a list of all the vans reported stolen in Besźel that night, and I want to know what happened in each case.”

  “All of them …?”

  “Don’t panic. It’ll be a lot for all vehicles, but factor out everything but vans round about this size, and it’s only for one night. Bring me everything you can on each of them. Including all paperwork associated, okay? Quick as possible.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “See if I can make this sleazy sod tell the truth.”

  COEWI, through cajoling, persuasion and computer expertise, got hold of the information within a few hours. To be able to do that, so quickly, to speed up official channels, is voodoo.

  For the first couple of hours as she went through things, I sat with Khurusch in a cell, and asked him in various ways and in several different formulations Who took your van? and Who took your pass? He whined and demanded his lawyer, which I told him he would have soon. Twice he tried getting angry, but mostly he just repeated that he did not know, and that he had not reported the thefts, of van and papers, because he had been afraid of the trouble he would bring on himself. “Especially because they already warned me on that, you know?”

  It was after the end of the working day when Corwi and I sat together in my office to work through it. It would be, as I warned her again, a long night.

  “What’s Khurusch being held for?”

  “At this stage Inappropriate Pass Storage and Failure to Report Crime. Depending on what we find tonight I might add Conspiracy to Murder, but I have a feeling—”

  “You don’t think he’s in on whatever, do you?”

  “He’s hardly a criminal genius, is he?”

  “I’m not suggesting he planned anything, boss. Maybe even that he knew about anything. Specific. But you don’t think he knew who took his van? Or that they were going to do something?”

  I wagged my head. “You didn’t see him.” I pulled the tape of his interrogations out of my pocket. “Take a listen if we have a bit of time.”

  She drove my computer, pulling the information she had into various spreadsheets. She translated my muttered, vague ideas into charts. “This is called data mining.” She said the last words in English.

  “Which of us is the canary?” I said. She did not answer. She only typed and drank thick coffee, “made fucking properly,” and muttered complaints about my software.

  “So this is what we have.” It was past two. I kept looking out of my office window at the Besźel night. Corwi smoothed out the papers she had printed. Beyond the window were the faint hoots and quietened mutter of late traffic. I moved in my chair, needing a piss from caffeinated soda.

  “Total number of vans reported stolen that night, thirteen.” She scanned through with her fingertip. “Of which three then turn up burnt out or vandalised in some form or other.”

  “Joyriders.”

  “Joyriders, yes. So ten.”

  “How long before they were reported?”

  “All but three, including the charmer in the cells, reported by the end of the following day.”

  “Okay. Now where’s the one where you have … How many of these vans have Ul Qoma pass papers?”

  She sifted. “Three.”

  “That sounds high—three out of thirteen?”

  “There are going to be way more for vans than for vehicles as a whole, because of all the import-export stuff.”

  “Still though. What are the statistics for the cities as a whole?”

  “What, of vans with passes? I can’t find it,” she said after a while of typing and staring at the screen. “I’m sure there must be a way to find out, but I can’t figure out a way to do it.”

  “Okay, if we have time we’ll chase that. But I’m betting it’s less than three out of thirteen.”

  “You could … It does sound high.”

  “Alright, try this. Of those three with passes that got stolen, how many owners have previous warnings for condition-transgressions?”

  She looked through papers and then at me. “All three of them. Shit. All three for inappropriate storage. Shit.”

  “Right. That does sound unlikely, right? Statistically. What happened to the other two?”

  “They were … Hold on. Belonged to Gorje Feder and Salya Ann Mahmud. Vans turned up the next morning. Dumped.”

  “Anything taken?”

  “Smashed up a bit, a few tapes, bit of change from Feder’s, an iPod from Mahmud’s.”

  “Let me look at the times—there’s no way of proving which of these were stolen first, is there? Do we know if these other two still have their passes?”

  “Never came up, but we could find out tomorrow.”

  “Do if you can. But I’m going to bet they do. Where were the vans taken from?”

  “Juslavsja, Brov Prosz, and Khurusch’s from Mashlin.”

  “Where were they found?”

  “Feder’s in … Brov Prosz. Jesus. Mahmud’s in Mashlin. Shit. Just off ProspekStrász.”

  “That’s about four streets from Khurusch’s office.”

  “Shit.” She sat back. “Talk this out, boss.”

  “Of the three vans that get stolen that night that have visas, all have records for failing to take their paperwork out of their glove compartments.”

  “The thief knew?”

  “Someone was visa-hunting. Someone with access to border-control records. They needed a vehicle they could get through Copula. They knew exactly who had form for not bothering to take their papers with them. Look at the positions.” I scribbled a crude map of Besźel. “Feder’s is taken first, but good on Mr. Feder, he and his staff have learnt their lesson, and he takes his paperwork with him now. When they realise that our criminals use it instead to drive here, to near where Mahmud parks hers. They jack it, fast, but Ms. Mahmud keeps her pass in the office now too, so after having made it look like a robbery, they dump it near the next in the list and move on.”

  “And the next one’s Khurusch’s.”

  “And he’s remained true to his previous tendency, and leaves his in the van. So they’ve got what they need, and it’s off to Copula Hall, and Ul Qoma.” Quiet.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s… looking dodgy, is what it is. It’s a very inside job. Inside what, I don’t know. Someone with access to arrest records.”

  “What the fuck do we do? What do we do?” she said again after I was quiet too long.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We need to tell someone …”

  “Who? Tell them what? We don’t have anything.”

  “Are you …” She was about to say joking, but she was intelligent enough to see the truth of it.

  “Correlations might be enough for us, but it’s not evidence, you know—not enough to do anything with.” We stared at each other. “Anyway … whatever this is … whoever …” I looked at the papers.

  “They’ve got access to stuff that…” Corwi said.

  “We need to be careful,” I said. She met my eyes. There was another set of long m
oments when neither of us spoke. We looked slowly around the room. I do not know what we were looking for but I suspect that she felt, in that moment, as suddenly hunted and watched and listened-to as she looked like she did.

  “So what do we do?” she said. It was unsettling to hear alarm like that in Corwi’s voice.

  “I guess what we’ve been doing. We investigate.” I shrugged slowly. “We have a crime to solve.”

  “We don’t know who it’s safe to talk to, boss. Anymore.”

  “No.” There was nothing else I could say, suddenly. “So maybe don’t talk to anyone. Except me.”

  “They’re taking me off this case. What can I …?”

  “Just answer your phone. If there’s stuff I can get you to do I’ll call.”

  “Where does this go?”

  It was a question that did not, at that point, mean anything. It was merely to fill the near noiselessness in the office, to cover up what noises there were, that sounded baleful and suspicious—each tick and creak of plastic an electronic ear’s momentary feedback, each small knock of the building the shift in position of a sudden intruder.

  “What I would really like,” she said, “is to invoke Breach. Fuck them all, it would be just great to sic Breach on them. It would be great if this weren’t our problem.” Yes. The notion of Breach exacting revenge on whomever, for whatever this was. “She found something out. Mahalia.”

  The thought of Breach had always seemed right. I remembered though, suddenly, the look on Mrs. Geary’s face. Between the cities, Breach watched. None of us knew what it knew.

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “No?”

  “Sure, it’s just… we can’t. So … we have to try to focus on this ourselves.”

  “We? The two of us, boss? Neither of us knows what the fuck’s going on.”

  Corwi was whispering by the end of the last sentence. Breach were beyond our control or ken. Whatever situation or thing this was, whatever had happened to Mahalia Geary, we two were its only investigators, so far as we could trust, and she would soon be alone, and I would be alone, too, and in a foreign city.