Rule 34

by Charles Stross

  The door opens.

  SOCO have tubed the corridor in blue plastic, taping the end to the walls about a metre from the lift-shaft. They’ve deployed a couple of battered plastic gear crates as an improv boot barrier, and there’s a bunny-suited civvie waiting for you both with the necessary kit. It’s not a drill you forget easily: boots, gloves, mask. “Where’s the scene?” you ask.

  “It’s in Room 509. Follow me.” You trail the crime-scene bunny down the blue plastic rabbit-hole. Bot-sized bulges whir and hum behind the billowing walls, moving slowly as they sample every nook and cranny, mapping and recording.

  There’s an unpleasant taste in your mouth as you approach the cloacal end of the warren—the tubing stops abruptly just past MacDonald’s office. The open doorway of Room 509 is covered by a transparent blue caul. “Shit,” you mutter. Kemal picks up on it, too: You see him tense out of the corner of your peripheral vision.

  “It’s all here,” says your Girl Guide, blinking innocent peepers that have seen far too much. She gestures at the opening. “We havena officially ID’d him, but if you can help—”

  “We were here less than two hours ago,” you say. “Can I see?”

  “Sure. We havena finished uploading the map into CopSpace though—there’s no much bandwidth in these old uni buildings—you’ll have to use your eyeballs.”

  You approach the membrane and peer through it. Then, after a moment, you step aside and make room for Kemal.

  You swallow bile. It’s Dr. MacDonald, of course. He’s slumped backwards in his chair, mottled bruises around his throat exposed to the tripedal camera bots as they delicately step around the room, scanning everything. Fumes of cyanoacrylate smoke rise from a fingerprint blower in one corner; blue laser light flickers as another robot systematically scans the dimensions of the room. There’s something wrong with MacDonald’s hands.

  “I can ID him,” you say. “That’s Dr. Adam MacDonald, Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University, and a person of interest to BABYLON. I interviewed him earlier this morning in this very office, less than two hours ago.”

  “I, too,” Kemal adds. “What is wrong with his hands?”

  Bunny-girl’s eyes narrow queasily. “Did you not see? The sick bastard who did this started to peel them. Used sodium hydroxide first, to hydrolyze the subcutaneous fat. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  You swallow. “Did you find the, uh, the . . .”

  “Tha gloves? No luck so far. We’ll be looking, though. Maybe he wants them for biometrics.”

  You take a deep breath. “Where’s everyone else? Up or down?”

  “Up.” Bunny-girl points at the ceiling. “You’ll be wanting to take the stairs.”

  Back over the boot barrier and up the stairs, you follow the blue police tape to a common room, where a handful of SOCOs and uniforms are busy working their drones. (Humans aren’t welcome in crime scenes these days: too much risk of evidence contamination.) The inspector in charge, DI Terry—you know her: efficient, good middle manager, married with two kids, not your type—comes over. “Liz. Inspector Aslan. What brings you here?”

  “Dickie MacLeish thought we ought to look in, seeing we were here two hours ago to interview the deceased,” you say, taking no great pleasure in her abrupt reaction. “He’s Dr. Adam MacDonald, Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University, and we were here to interview him as a possible material witness with knowledge bearing on the BABYLON investigation. I’m sorry, we had no idea someone was going to whack him like this. Otherwise, I’d have brought him into protective custody.”

  “You’re certain it’s connected?” She raises an eyebrow behind her specs.

  “Oh, come on! How often—”

  “Correlation does not imply causation,” Terry says drily. “Just saying. But I’m not betting against you: I just think we’ll need something more than coincidence before we hand it to the Procurator Fiscal.”

  “Okay, how about this? Do we have the entrance security-camera footage yet?”

  “It’ll be in the can as soon as the warrant’s signed off by the Sheriff’s Office. Give it another hour.” She looks as impatient as you feel.

  “Oh. Well, then.” You spot Kemal opening his mouth, and add, “We’d better be going. We shouldn’t keep you. I’ll formally report the positive ID as soon as I get back to the office.”

  “Excellent.” She turns her back on you: not being rude, just taking a call from higher up the totem pole.

  “Inspector Kavanaugh, shouldn’t you—”

  “Hold it.” You beckon Kemal back towards the staircase. “We have a connection. Are you ready to follow it?”

  “John Christie. Yes? And the next person on his list is . . .”

  “Our friend Mr. Hussein.”

  Kemal is two steps ahead of you on the stairs, hurrying on down. You charge after him. “You think Christie is a fixer. For whoever is trying to stop ATHENA from arranging fatal accidents for netcrime nodes.”

  “Whoever, or whatever.” You’re finding breath hard as you descend past the third floor. “I’m going to call Dickie. Let him know.” Your phone dials as you take the stairs two at a time. “Inspector—”

  Dickie’s voice buzzes like a rusty dalek: “—eport. What’s BZZT situation?”

  “Positive ID, the victim is MacDonald. Need the doorway-camera footage to be sure, but I believe the perpetrator is this Christie character. Preliminary ICIU legwork on MacDonald shows a relational connection to another person of interest, Anwar Hussein. I’m on my way there stat. Requesting backup.”

  For a miracle, the voice channel is able to overcome the lack of bandwidth. “Backup? What for?”

  “I believe our murderer is tidying up loose ends relating to BABYLON.” The full story will have to wait for a briefing room and a dog and pony show. “I think Hussein’s life is in danger, and I’ll be wanting a protective-custody order. Worst case, I may be walking in on another homicide scene.”

  “You—” Even over the phone, you hear Dickie’s brain crunch into a different gear. “Roger.” Old-school, very old-school. “Okay, I’ll notify South Side Control that you’re in play and put someone onto the paper trail for—isna Hussein on probation? That’s a quick-and-dirty option if you need it. Call me when you get somewhere.”

  “Thanks. Bye,” you gasp as you crunch down the final steps from first floor to ground, and stumble out into the lobby. Then it’s a quick march through the gaping doorway and out to your car, which is still sitting right where you immobilized it.

  “This never happens,” you say as you drop into the driver’s seat and throw Anwar Hussein’s home address at the car’s autopilot.

  “Never give an honest cop a clean lead?” Kemal pulls his door shut and belts up.

  “Yes, that. We’ll end up breaking up a kid’s birthday party or something. Just you see.” You stab your finger on the blues button, and the light bar starts strobing. The car beeps at you impatiently to put your seat belt on: As soon as you click it into place, the engine turns over, and the car spins in a tight U-turn, then floors the accelerator. With the blue lights flashing, the safety governor is off and the BMW’s autopilot is a better driver than you’ll ever be. It howls along Causewayside, swerving around startled jay-walkers, takes the Cameron Toll roundabout with siren blaring and tyres screeching, then launches itself towards Gilmerton like a guided missile. As the moving map homes in on the destination, you kill the siren and lights with one shaking finger. It’s like running into a wall of marshmallows: The autopilot brakes so hard you’re thrown against the seat belt as it drops back below the speed limit.

  “Was that strictly necessary?”

  “I really hope not.” Getting the speeding tickets rescinded is a royal pain in the arse if you can’t show due cause. As the car slows and turns into a side street, your specs show you a stack of records hanging over one particular house. It’s not a particularly posh manor, being one element of an English-style terrace row, but it
’s got a garden of sorts and three stories and a Velux window up top: You wouldn’t have pegged this particular rodent as being the kind to afford an actual manse of his own, especially after the proceeds of crime inquiry, but appearances can be deceptive. And you’re certainly not in routine working territory, the big sinkhole estates like Craigmillar or Granton, much less the inner-city night-life battle zones.

  The car stops. You get on the line to the control room. “DI Kavanaugh and Inspector Aslan here. We’ve got an intelligence lead to Hussein, Anwar”—you drop in his tag—“and are on-site attempting to gain entry to his residence. Stand-by backup request, over and hold.” You keep the connection open.

  You get out and walk up the pavement to the front door with the red geomarker twirling over it. Kemal is right behind you. “I think something is not right,” he says quietly. You follow his finger to the front door. It’s ajar.

  Someone screams inside, a shriek of inarticulate terror. It only lasts a second before it’s cut off sharply.

  Kemal is past you in a hurry as you hit the phone again: “Backup now! Violent incident in progress!” Then you’re after him as he shoulderbarges the door and charges up the stairs. There’s a moment of confusion as you take in the scene—living room off to one side, kitchen off to another, staircase in front, Kemal’s legs punching the treads—then Kemal is coming back down the stairs, arse over tit, tumbling loosely. You shout “police!” as someone else comes down with him, lands boot first on top of Kemal, and launches himself at you.

  You brace for the impact, fists raised—he’s a big man, vaguely familiar from your lifelog video as you held the door, leaving Appleton Tower—bingo—you try to block but he can outreach you and he’s swinging a wheelie-bag in one hand. He knocks you head first into the kitchen. Things are vague: You try to get your hands up and someone is nagging something in your ear about backup but the door is open and the man is gone.

  You gasp for breath for a few seconds, then get back online. “Control, we have an incident. Violent offender, 195, hundred kilos, carrying a suitcase. Attacked two officers, fleeing the scene.” Whatever the scene is. You push yourself up and stumble into the hall. Your head aches painfully. Kemal is lying limp at the bottom of the stairs. “Ambulance needed on scene, officer down.” You lean over him long enough to confirm he’s breathing, then take the stairs.

  “Target is the man on the staircase?” asks Control.

  “Who else?” You bite back an impolite suggestion. That’s why I was sending you my real-time video feed, idiot. “I’m searching the scene. Pass it to airborne, unable to maintain hot pursuit on foot right now.” Read: Kemal is stirring but won’t be chasing anyone for the next few days, and as for yourself, you feel like you’ve been kicked in the head.

  “Roger, calling airborne assets now,” says Control. “Backup arriving by car, estimated two minutes away.”

  You hear something from up the next flight of stairs. Panting, you climb them and find Anwar lying on the floor. There’s something yellow in his mouth, and he’s turning blue. Writhing. You realize his hands and feet are tied: the yellow thing—he’s choking on it. For the next double-handful of seconds, you’re busy kneeling down and tugging at it frantically. When it comes free he gasps for breath in deep whooping intakes of breath. His eyes are rolling. You drop the yellow rubber duck and watch as it expands, then look around. You see bedroom doors to either side, a trapdoor with a ladder coming down from the ceiling, and a noose dangling in the solitary sunbeam that slants through the trap and puddles on the perennial victim, lying panting on the floor.

  The last handful of dominoes click into place on the board.

  You dive down the staircase just as Kemal is sitting up, holding his head. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ve called an ambulance.”

  “Don’t need—” He sounds vague.

  You hold up a hand. “How many fingers?” He squints at you. “Ambulance, Kemal. Understand?”

  He nods, then winces. “Is Hussein—”

  “Still alive.” Not for much longer if we hadn’t hurried. It’s a very strange feeling, and a rare one, to know you’ve just directly saved someone’s life: almost counterbalanced by the gnawing fear that by not giving hot pursuit, you may have let a murderer slip through your fingers. You hit the phone again. “Control, Kavanaugh here. The absconder in Gilmerton is on foot and dangerous. Provisional identification as alias John Christie, real name unknown. He may be armed, and he’s wanted for murder and attempted murder, repeat, murder and attempted murder.” He was going to hang Anwar. Fake a suicide. Wasn’t he? The MO is different from MacDonald, but Christie clearly isn’t a regular spree killer. He has no history: He’s like a nightmare that stepped out of nowhere, just as the BABYLON killings began. Which is yet another coincidence to consider at length. Is he here to tie up loose ends, or is he a loose end in his own right? “Cross-reference to the Appleton Tower murder: This is probably the same perp.”

  “Control here, please hold.” Blue FLASH alerts begin to scroll up your CopSpace log, going out to every soul on the police net within a couple of kilometres. Seconds later, you hear sirens in the distance. “I’m proceeding with that, Inspector. Is there a warrant?”

  “Real-time response.” The paper-work mountain that’s about to hit you would cause your desk to collapse if it wasn’t entirely digital. You begin to climb the stairs to the second floor: “We have an ABH and attempted murder victim here; please confirm second ambulance.”

  Hussein is sitting up, leaning against the wall beside an open bedroom door. There are children’s toys scattered on the floor, an unmade bed. His eyes are half-closed. After a moment, you clock that he’s weeping quietly.

  You squat down in front of him. “Mr. Hussein. Anwar.” He shows no sign of noticing, which is probably no surprise: Probably in shock, you figure. You bring up the check-list, tell your specs to run a body-temperature scan, but he’s not looking particularly cold, and his respiration’s within spitting distance of normal. “Can you talk to me?”

  His shoulders shake. “The man who was here.” Body posture: utter desolation. “Who is he?”

  Hussein shudders. “Colonel Datka’s man.”

  Who? You focus. “Colonel who?”

  “Said he worked for Colonel Datka.”

  Right . . . “Who is Colonel Datka?”

  Anwar takes a deep breath and looks at you. “I am the honorary consul of the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan. Was. Told him I’d resigned, but he wouldn’t listen. Colonel Datka works for Kyrgyzstan. Police, or spy, or something. The bad man. Calls himself Christie, came to take some papers from me—another passport. Says he’s Peter Manuel. Left his suitcase with me.”

  Suitcase? This is making less and less sense, but in your experience these things seldom do when they begin to unravel. “What about the suitcase?” you ask, hoping this is going somewhere.

  “Bibi opened it.” He closes his eyes. “Then she left me.” His shoulders shake again. “She thought I would have something like that! The shame.”

  “Hang on a minute,” you tell him. Then you open a voice channel back to ICIU. “Moxie? Can you run a search for me? Multiple names: Colonel Datka, Kyrgyzstan. Issyk-Kulistan. Then Peter Manuel, alternate identity, John Christie.”

  Sirens getting louder, then cut off abruptly. Voices downstairs.

  “I’m looking, skipper. How do you spell those?”

  “How should I know? Try soundex.” You look at Anwar, who is snuffling damply into his moustache. Bibi is his wife? But if he was also hanging out with Adam MacDonald on a gay hookup site . . . “It’s related to BABYLON and the Appleton Tower killing, and you can dial it up to eleven. I’m going to put you on hold now.”

  You turn back to your victim: “It’s going to be alright, Anwar. There’s an ambulance coming, and we’d like to ask you some more questions. While Christie or Manuel or whoever is on the run, we’re going to want to keep you in protective custody. Do you understand? Christie was . . .
” You nod towards the trap-door. “Wasn’t he?”

  Hussein’s expression would be enough for you, even before he opens his mouth. “He was going to kill me!” he says, his voice rising to a squeak.

  “Right after your wife left you,” you point out, wincing at a twinge from your headache. Anwar just raised a very interesting point, and one that suggests a significant difference in planning between this and the scene back at Appleton Tower: “Been working up to this for a while, hasn’t he?”

  Anwar nods. “Well, tell you what. After the ambulance crew check you out, you can come down to the station and tell me all about it. Then we’ll find somewhere safe for you to stay”—most likely a station cell, but you don’t want to frighten him right now—“until we’ve caught Christie.”

  Then there is a thudding of boots on stairs as your backup finally arrives, and you breathe a sigh of relief.

  It’s nearly all over, you think. And then it is.

  FELIX: Hummingbird

  The phone rings for you in midafternoon.

  It’s a particularly grotesque piece of Pakistani alabaster, carved into the semblance of a gilt-trimmed putto clutching a handset. It was barfed up from the Internet by a back-street fabber in a Sindhi market town. One of its legs has been broken and inexpertly glued back into place using epoxy resin—typical of this stupid stuffy government office.

  You reach across the desk and answer it. “Felix.”

  “Sir? Please confirm—” It’s the duty officer in the operations centre. You go through the challenge-response routine. “Sir, beg to report that the Hummingbird has flown.”

  “Excellent.” You put the phone down and stand up, then go through into the next room. “We’re on, boys.”

  (This network is unable to monitor subsequent events.)

  You are an old hand and do not entirely trust these modern communication tools. Hummingbird is unknown to the network. It appears to be a verbally prearranged code, though. Interior Ministry troops are deploying downstairs, loading their personal defence weapons—older AK-74s with iron sights—and climbing into ancient trucks that bellow and belch blue diesel fumes as they move out.