“I think we’ve got preliminary coverage of all the parties on the scene of crime. Not that it makes much sense to talk about the scene as such, but Grant tells me the imaging is complete, so we’ve got an evidence sandbox with a complete snapshot of Hayek Associates’ IT set-up as of Thursday evening, with traffic inputs since then.” The inspector shrugs elegantly. You’re not sure whose office she’s sitting in with her cam, but it’s plusher than yours. “Now for the follow-up.” She pauses and looks straight at the phonecam, for all the world as if she’s reading from a teleprompter. “Mark, if I read my tea leaves correctly, we’re going to get a shitload of interested parties descending on the scene today, from insurers and underwriters on down. I want a complete visitor log and report on what they want with the target. Maybe we’ll get something back from shit-storm analysis this time.”
Mark—Sergeant Burroughs—grunts something semi-audible.
“Yes, I want a full background on everyone.” Kavanaugh raises her coffee mug (genuine ceramic, none of your recyclable cardboard nonsense). “You and Grant can go camp out in the bomb shelter this morning. I’ll be along later. Sergeant Smith.” (You stiffen unconsciously.) “It’s been forty-eight hours. Have we heard from your missing party?”
“No mam.” It’s out of your mouth before you realize it. “I emailed, phoned, IM’d, left a paper note, and banged on his door, if that’s what you’re asking. And I started the clock.”
“Well then.” She smiles. “He works from home, we have reason to believe he’s got material evidence relating to an ongoing investigation in his possession, and he isn’t answering the door after forty-eight hours. Meet me at the Meadowplace station in half an hour. It’s time to call in the ram team.”
Warrender Park Terrace. To your left, the Links, grassy meadow with cycle paths and ancient trees spreading their boughs over the parked cars. To your right, your typical Edinburgh tenement block; roughly carved stone blocks, rickety doors on the common stairwell shared by a dozen flats, and no sign of what’s going on behind those politely drawn slatted blinds and net curtains. It could conceal genteel working-class pensioner poverty, or a space-age bachelor pad. A loudly arguing family of five or a solitary bloater rotting in an armchair in front of a dusty TV.
CopSpace sheds some light on matters, of course. Blink and it descends in its full glory. Here’s the spiralling red diamond of a couple of ASBO cases on the footpath (orange jackets, blue probation service tags saying they’re collecting litter). There’s the green tree of signs sprouting over the doorway of number thirty-nine, each tag naming the legal tenants of a different flat. Get your dispatcher to drop you a ticket, and the signs open up to give you their full police and social services case files, where applicable. There’s a snowy blizzard of number plates sliding up and down Bruntsfield Place behind you, and the odd flashing green alert tag in the side roads. This is the twenty-first century, and all the terabytes of CopSpace have exploded out of the dusty manila files and into the real world, sprayed across it in a Technicolor mass of officious labelling and crime notices. If labelling the iniquities of the real world for all to see was enough to put an end to them, you could open CopSpace up as a public overlay and crime would vanish like a hang-over. (If only half the tags weren’t out-of-date, and the other half was free of errors…)
You park up behind the Tranny just as Kavanaugh and Sergeant Gavaghan are stretching their legs and the ram team are getting their kit-bags out. She nods at you, and Gavaghan makes eye contact. He’s okay, you’ve worked with him before. “Where is it?” asks the skipper.
“Up here.” You point. A couple of uniforms you don’t know start hauling their bags towards the steps. “Whoa, it’s the top-floor flat. Let me show you.” One of them mutters something under his breath. You pretend not to notice.
It’s a warm day, and the smell of cut grass and pollen from the horse chestnuts on the Links tickles your nose. By the time you reach the top of the stairs, you’re breathing a bit faster than you should be. You bend down and examine the letter-box. Your access form is still in place. More to the point, the Evening Post is jammed halfway through. The freesheet comes out on Thursdays, clinging grimly to its declining circulation. The inspector’s right behind you. You point at the letter box and she nods. “Not a good sign. Very well. Sergeant Gavaghan, would you like to inspect the premises before we go in?”
Gavaghan glances over his shoulder. “Jimmy, you got the X-ray specs?”
“Yes, sir.” Jim leans against the wall directly under the skylight and rummages around in his kit-bag. “X-ray specs coming right up.”
They’re not spectacles and they don’t run on X-rays, but the terahertz radar box can see through walls well enough to fit the bill. Bob switches it on, pointing it at the stone floor, and opens up a new layer in CopSpace. The skipper finger-types a labeclass="underline" MACDONALD RESIDENCE. “Let’s see what’s in there.”
Jim points his box at the door and fiddles with it. Then he starts swearing. “I’m not getting a signal, mam. Nothing at all.”
Kavanaugh raises an eyebrow. “Is it working? Give me a quick peek sideways.”
“Just a sec…” He takes the box off-line from CopSpace, then swings it round for a moment, to point at the neighbour’s door. “Yes, it’s working okay.” He points it back at the absent programmer’s front door. “If’n I didn’t know better, I’d figure there was shielding in there.”
Kavanaugh raises her eyebrow higher. You make eye contact. She’s smiling, but there’s no humour in it. “He’s sharp,” she remarks to nobody in particular. “That’s a distinct possibility. Put your box to sleep. We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
Jim looks up at the ductwork where the electricity and gas pipes enter the flat. “Shite,” he says succinctly.
“Constable Rogers,” Gavaghan mutters, “the rams, please. Over-alls, everyone.” He turns away and starts talking to dispatch, asking them to find out who owns the utility feeds and get them shut off.
Rogers—and Jim—hand you a disposable overall, then get the door jacks and battering ram assembled. The latter is about a metre and a half long, and has a transparent face shield and sixteen evidence cameras hanging off it. While they’re doing that, Gavaghan drafts you to help with the duct tape and nylon sheeting, improvising a loose tent to cover the front door and keep particulates from escaping.
“Everyone record full lifelog, please,” says Kavanaugh, standing at the back of the cocoonlike white tunnel. Even wearing a blue polythene bag, she manages to look coolly managerial.
Jim glances at you as Rogers makes busy with the horizontal ram, jacking the uprights of the door-frame apart to help pop the lock’s tongue out of its groove. “You got your Girl Guides’ badge in battering rams?” he asks. Are you going to get in the way?
“Nah.” You shrug. “What you want me to do?”
“Get back and stand oot the way. We’ll take two practice swings first. Don’t get too close, I wouldna want to put you in hospital.”
“Okay.” You line up behind his back, looking at the door over his shoulder, through the thick Lexan shield.
“One—two—three!” The impact is jarring, but the door takes it. “Jesus,” Rogers mutters disgustedly. “Again! One—two—”
The door topples inwards with a loud crash. It’s one of those flats that has a windowless room for a hall, everything else opening off doorways to either side. This being the top floor, it has a skylight, and what light there is comes streaming through the open Varilux window and the door to the living room, which is ajar. The floor’s bare, and the walls are an odd golden colour, papered with a curious design.