Neme stalked back to the desk where she’d tossed the shock box, and threw herself down in a chair. She picked up a white packet and removed a brown cigarette, lit it, and leaned back. A curl of fume rose off the narrow cylinder clutched low between the unadorned ring and middle fingers of her left hand.
Matheson watched her smoke with her eyes closed for a moment before he walked toward her. “Shit,” she muttered, and coughed as he drew close.
She twitched her head up as he stopped, and gave him a pinched glare. “Hullo, rook,” she said, drawling out the greeting as she turned her chair to face him. “Feeling better?” She drew on her cigarette so the tip glowed cherry red, her mouth hidden behind her cupped hand.
“Yes, sir.” He felt nauseated, though he’d never tell her so, and noticed that her hand closed into a loose fist near her cheek as she let the smoke rise up from her mouth like a curtain. It smelled like burning driftwood thick with a harsh tang of blue salts. Salfrin. Not illegal, but not a vice he’d expected from a woman whose family had a seat at Corporation House.
Neme pulled a sour face and raised one dark blue eyebrow. “Social call?”
“No, sir. I’m collecting the prelim and canvass reports on the Paz da Sorte case.”
Neme rolled her eyes and pushed her chair back to get room to cross her ankles up on the desk corner. “I already sent that to the CIFO,” she said, sneering a bit on Dillal’s title.
Matheson didn’t challenge the lie. “Yes sir, but I need an official sign-off and your prelim report.”
She snorted. “You’re wasting my time. It’s a cat shit case and if your precious inspector can’t pick a couple of goldenrods and tie it off already, what’s the fucking point of his existence?”
Matheson bit his lip as she stared at him, leaning back in her chair. “Same as yours, I expect. Sir.”
Her smile twisted. “You better watch that mouth of yours, Matheson. Some people around here don’t appreciate smart-assery. Unless it’s my smart ass they’re kissing.” She rested her head against the chair back and smoked, looking boneless and limp.
Matheson kept his mouth shut and tried to remember the medical uses for Salfrin while he waited her out. He couldn’t imagine that Neme suffered from any debilitating conditions, any more than it seemed likely she was a recovering Wire addict.
“Why should I sign off on these reports?” she asked without moving from her sprawl. “It’s a routine bit of dreck violence. No one gives the least crap about this case. Except your whip.” She sat up in a flurry of spilling flimsy. “And how is he? Still ‘fine, sir’? All hybrid vigor like a mongrel dog.”
Matheson didn’t reply.
Neme barked a laugh. “What? No response? Hasn’t gone and died on us—I can only hope.”
“No. Sir.”
“Then fuck off.”
“No.”
“Spine?” she asked. “Oh, no. Wait,” she continued, looking around as if the idea had only just occurred to her, though Matheson knew she was ganking him. “Evidentiary procedure. Doesn’t matter a whore’s damn if I sign off or not unless this pile of cat shit actually comes to trial.” She raised her eyebrows. “Does it? So, our mechanical man actually found something. Bugger me—it works!” She rolled her eyes and went back to smoking, pausing a moment to pick a minuscule shred of Salfrin off her lower lip.
Matheson waited. Istvalk had finished with the Dreihle and stood to walk him to holding as Sojan returned with the IO. From the corner of his eye, Matheson could see all three of them watching what was going on between him and Neme. She surely didn’t care what they thought, but even she had a superior officer to answer to—Investigation’s Chief Superintendent Dominic Belcourso, who wasn’t known for his easy-going nature—and Sojan could damage any complaint Neme forwarded if he could say he’d seen her obstruct or damage someone else’s investigation.
Neme knew it as well as they did, and the corner of her mouth crooked in a cynical smile. “What in hell are you doing here, anyway, Matheson? Some hopper-brained idea about serving the greater good?” She coughed up a derisive laugh. “That’s nothing but ego gas. There is a thin line between cops and criminals, and this end of the law—in fact, any end of the law—is not a noble profession. We are one half of the reciprocating machine that cuts humanity into chunks and spews it out to feed the pigs in their diamond-studded pens.” She took one long, final drag and ground out the stub of her smoke on the side of the desk, letting the detritus fall into the trash chute below. Damn her—he’d seen cigarette butts in the Paz da Sorte alley that looked the same and if they didn’t have her DNA on the lip ends, he’d eat them.
Matheson cast a significant look over her expensive clothes and back to her face as she peered at him with narrowed eyes. Neme leaned farther into the desk and glared up at him, her jaw working sideways a little. “At least I know what color the shit is on my trotters,” she said. “And where it came from.” She put her hand up. “Give me your fucking mobile.”
Matheson hesitated.
“What? Now you don’t want me to sign off?”
“You have a terminal.”
She turned her head to regard the terminal with contempt. “That piece of shit? I’d rather use yours. Unless you don’t really want my hash . . .”
Matheson took the MDD from his pocket and handed it to her. Neme looked it over. “Peerless. Nice. I had one of these. It’s still running in an eel pit somewhere under the Verdan Archipelago.” She thumbed the screen on and waited while Matheson unlocked the input and opened the appropriate files.
Neme swiped through to the GISA interface and hashed through the verifications and report upload in short order, without much pause to check that they were the right documents. Then she tossed the mobile back at Matheson with a casual flip of her wrist that made the device arc in a flat spin toward his face. “Keep me in the loop—I want a front row seat.”
Matheson caught the mobile clumsily with both hands and slipped it back into the loops on his chest pocket without a comment. He added a perfunctory “Thank you, sir,” as he turned away.
Neme made a harsh sound, like a warning bark. “Matheson.”
He turned back and found her pointing at him.
“You will keep me informed,” she said. “Technically it was my opener, my case. Current protocol says you copy me every file. And if you don’t, I will make your job hell.”
“Sir. I don’t understand why you’re interested in keeping tabs on a case you were glad to hand off. One you think is a waste of time and effort.”
“Entertainment. And I don’t want to have to play catch up when it drops back onto my desk.”
“You assume Inspector Dillal will fail.”
Neme gave an ironic lift of her eyebrows. “You’re a bigger idiot than I thought. Crawl back into your kennel, puppy. The dogs in this yard are too rough for you.” When Matheson made no response and didn’t leave, she added, “Piss off.”
She didn’t move until Matheson had started walking away.
CHAPTER NINE
Day 2: Thursday—Morning
Santos hadn’t responded to Matheson’s messages—all his attempts to talk had been rebuffed so far. It was frustrating. Matheson wanted to get the case moving, but it felt as if he wasn’t making any headway at all and the total freeze-out his partner—former partner—was serving him was more than just annoying. The thing that rankled most was the doubt the inspector had planted in his mind about Santos, but it was there now, and it niggled like a loose tooth.
It was the niggling that got Matheson out of bed much earlier than he’d intended, but six hours’ sleep would do, and he was awake by 0540. His schedule was upside down after the fainting episode and Matheson was finding the change disorienting, but useful. The Dreihleat woke up early too, and if he couldn’t get to Santos, he could at least start on that.
Fog floated off the canal in the Dreihleat, making the ground a mystery, but thinning quickly as it rose. The speakers and agitators hadn’t b
raved the gloom and there were fewer drunks and drug addicts in evidence than he usually saw on his own shift, but the streets were getting busy with people on their way to legitimate jobs or slinking home from shadier ones, shopkeepers opening up, and bands of workmen—both paid and GISA detainees—taking down the viewing stands for the previous day’s races, and mounting banners and setting up platforms for the Ice Parade that evening. Automated drones dumped the materials at designated beacons, but the workers did the labor—scut-work, pointlessly corrosive.
One of the detainee workers kicked and swore at a Dreihle child who crept close to investigate his tools. The SO overseeing the group looked bored and did nothing even when the sound of a boot against flesh wrung a sharp yelp from the child.
Matheson turned and started toward the altercation. A Dreihle woman dropped her broom and darted from the stretch of sidewalk she’d been sweeping to drag the child away. But once out of the overseer’s sight, the woman slapped the child around the ears and sent it to pick through a drift of trash she had swept into a pile beside an alley mouth. No one else took any notice at all.
He paused at the edge of Yshteppa Park and watched the fish sellers—both men and women—removing baskets from the goldwood saplings. The fish scales clinging on the branches left an odd, oily smell on the air. Supposedly, Ohba gardeners had discovered that the adult trees developed their distinctive glitter by absorbing minerals from the scales. Matheson thought that as unlikely as Santos’s contention that half the stink was rotten memories of Yshteppa Dome, which had stood on the spot for fifty years of the terraform, a safe home for the workers, until it had been collapsed for clearance, killing the Dreihleen and Ohba council arguing about settlement rights inside. Another contribution to their eternal spite. “Everybody’s gotta have someone to hate,” Santos had said.
The fishmongers slung the baskets over their shoulders and walked along the canal toward the docks at Fish Market Basin. They’d carry the best of the catch to the high-end hotels and restaurants, the rest going to whoever got there first. The whole job could have been automated and managed by a handful of human workers, but people were cheaper than machines and required less maintenance in the swampy tropical air. Santos joked that they were easier to recycle too, and Matheson watched the Dreihleen around him, uncomfortable with the sudden memory of the morgue—unwanted people and parts, like lost articles no one seemed to care about. He shivered and walked with the crowd toward the basin, the mist creeping around them.
The database had given a nearby address for Denny Leran’s aunt and uncle—his only known residence. Matheson wasn’t expecting a lot of luck in that quarter, but he had to start with something, and folks around the fish market didn’t sleep late. He went down Rua dos Peixes in the moving fog and a cloud of morning smoke spiced with the skunky redolence of weed and Salfrin that trailed behind the fishmongers as they muttered a running patois of Dreihleen mulched with Central English. The fog in the shadow of the crater made the crowd into ink-wash splashes at five meters and hid them completely at six; their voices seemed like the whispers of ghosts.
They passed the coffee house Matheson had visited just a day ago, and he saw a pair of first shift SOs—Jora and Halfennig, he thought—walking toward him. They were laughing over something and the larger of the two, Halfennig, elbow-hooked one of the passing crowd and coerced a smoke from the Dreihle, who never met his eyes. Less than five meters away—they can’t help but see me.
Matheson hesitated, creating an eddy in the stream of people as they flowed around him. Dillal had warned him S-Office might be hostile. Cold crawled up the back of his neck and he had an urge to get out of the way. He turned and headed into an alley, thinking he’d go around the block to come out below the other SOs, and hoping he’d made his move quickly enough.
Someone called out to him and he swore under this breath, “Merry hell.” He turned toward the two approaching ofiçes—he didn’t like leaving his unprotected back to them. They stepped apart to block the path from the alley back into the street.
“Hey,” Halfennig snapped, pinching out the smoke and stowing it in his chest pocket. “What are you doing out here? This isn’t your shift.”
“Not your patch either,” Jora added. He was shorter, darker, and stockier than Halfennig, with a bit of extra weight that amounted to nothing in a fight. From the looks on their faces they figured Matheson’s taller, thinner frame just made him more breakable.
“Sure, it’s my patch,” Matheson replied. “Third shift. With Santos.”
“Not any more,” Halfennig said. “We all know what happened. We had the morning walk. Santos is on leave and you—what are you on?”
“Seconded over to I-Office,” Jora said as if it was on a par with fucking goats.
“It wasn’t my request,” Matheson replied, raising his hands.
“You should have refused the honor.”
“Why?” he asked, and the word was out of his mouth before he realized he shouldn’t have said it.
The other two SOs exchanged amused glances before stepping forward together and shouldering him backward. They pushed him against the wall and closed in, blocking escape to either side. He could fight out, but it would hurt—probably fine with them.
Halfennig leaned in, pressing one hand against Matheson’s shoulder and pinning him to the blue stone wall. “You don’t abandon a partner, rook.”
“S-Office stands together,” Jora added, emphasizing his points with sharp finger-jabs. “You turfed your TO to the snoops.”
“I only told them what happened—it’s not a knock on Santos that he went jumpwise.”
“You made him look bad. Now you’re stepping across to do I-Office’s grunt work? You’re letting us down, boy.”
Matheson tried not to flinch in anticipation of a blow, but he could tell by Halfennig’s chuckle that he’d failed. “You’re new here, but you’re catching on,” Halfennig said.
“Get right or you’re gonna regret it.”
The SOs stepped back and turned away, walking off into the thinning crowd. Matheson leaned back against the wall, breathing slowly while he wrestled his temper. He wouldn’t whine to Dillal—what could he do?—and complaining to Security Office’s Chief Superintendent, Lorca Feresintavi, would just make his position within S-Office worse. He didn’t need that. He wasn’t going to stay on the bottom rung forever—he’d move up or he’d move out and either way, he knew how to keep his head down while still moving forward. I made it past Callista; I’ll make it past them.
The distance from the coffee house to Fish Market Basin at the end of the canal wasn’t much, but the change in the neighborhood was vast. Tourists didn’t visit the Dreihleat fish market unless they were shady or stupid. The stalls were busy during the morning, just a few steps up from the canal, and the reek of fish viscera and fast-moving tropical rot disinclined most people to linger any longer than they had to. After hours the area became the haunt of small-time drug dealers and black marketeers, lurking in the shadows of the stalls they’d tagged as their own or under the canvas of the narrow canoes moored at the steps. Matheson suspected that the shady dealers had arrangements with the daytime vendors to use their space, or there would have been trade society rumbles every night. He and Santos had made only the most perfunctory of passes through the market when they were on shift and it was rare that they’d seen anyone. There was always evidence that someone had been there, though, and Matheson suspected they vanished into the cliff tunnels as patrols approached.
Now the market was busy with regular business, conducted in gestures and muttered haggling, cut through by the calls of boom-tail terns and the splash of scarlet cormorants. The sun was struggling to pierce the fog, making the shadows blur and wash into the mist. He checked for trouble and turned down Canoe Street, putting his back to the fish market. Half the homes and shops on Canoe were within the crater wall, facing a row of freestanding buildings on the other side of the narrow road. The road was quiet, with only a
few people moving about while a hollow-ribbed hound slunk after a razor cat hunting in the shadows.
The address he sought was near the end of the road, on the cliff side. Doors, windows, and staircases had been carved into the scarp with industrial plasma torches. The process had sealed a hard sheen on the gray-blue stone surfaces that time and use had only scuffed. Here and there rougher excavations and changes had been made with cruder tools that left the habitation looking like a sand castle that had been attacked by inattentive woodpeckers.
Leran’s aunt and uncle lived on the level above their racing canoe shop. The picto-sign on the wide roll-up door was a painting of a pair of sollets—Gattian sea mammals that looked like someone had bred a spotted seal with a rabid wolverine—fighting for a basket of fish. Now that the big canoe race of the season was over, the workshop was closed, and Matheson hoped to find the boatwright at home.
It was a long, steep climb to the apartment. Must be hell in the rainy season. Surely, no one with another choice would live up here? Shutters of selectively permeable canvas stretched on painted frames covered the windows, but the door at the top of the stairs was open. Matheson looked through, staying carefully outside, and called, “Hello? Anyone home?”
A Dreihle man emerged from the gloom at the rear of the room. He stopped a short distance into the light, slightly turned away from Matheson. His dark hair was graying at the front and secured in a knot at the back of his head with a skewer-and-net kind of arrangement, and his once-fine clothes were stained with fish and crackled varnish. The low light didn’t account for the dulled marigold color of his skin or the curving blue lines that Matheson could barely see on the far side of his face. The man stooped a bit and didn’t say anything, his gaze flicking nervously from Matheson to the wall, then back to him, and away again as if searching for a way out. He blinked frequently, as if he could clear Matheson from his vision.
Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel Page 9
