“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 moments 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.
Part Two
UL QOMA
Chapter Twelve
THE INNARD ROADS OF COPULA HALL seen from a police car. We did not travel fast and our siren was off, but in some vague pomp our light flickered and the concrete around us was staccato blue-lit. I saw my driver glance at me. Constable Dyegesztan his name was, and I had not met him before. I had not been able to get Corwi even as my escort.
We had gone on the low flyovers through Besźel Old Town into the convolutes of Copula Hall’s outskirts, and down at last into its traffic quadrant. Past and under the stretches of facade where caryatids looked at least somewhat like figures from Besź history, towards where they were Ul Qoman, into the hall itself, where a wide road overlit by windows and grey lights was sided at the Besź end by a long line of pedestrians seeking day entry. In the distance beyond the red taillights we were faced by the tinted headlights of Ul Qoman cars, more gold than ours.
“Been to Ul Qoma before, sir?”
“Not for a long time.”
When the border gates came into view Dyegesztan spoke to me again. “Did they have it like this before?” He was young.
“More or less.”
A policzai car, we were in the official lane, behind dark imported Mercedeses that probably carried politicians or businesspeople on fact-finding missions. A way off was the engine-grumbling line of quotidian travellers in cheaper cars, spivs and visitors.