Ely thought he felt the eyes of the crowd glance over at him. That, he had long ago decided, was the problem with the Chancellor’s decree that he be seen. It was a constant reminder that the labour of others was being expended to keep him fed. Up until now, there had been little enough crime that he sometimes agreed with the statement.
Ordinarily, the table in the corner of the lounge was a good place to work. Usually after work and Recreation, workers spent their few off-shift hours lost in the worlds behind their displays. When people did talk it was usually quietly, and these days usually about what life might be like on Mars. But not this shift.
Ely wasn’t sure whether it was Councillor Cornwall, the Greene children’s Instructor, or the Chancellor herself who had leaked the news about the murders. It didn’t matter, it was Cornwall who’d managed to capitalise on the event first. He had issued a statement clarifying the rumours, and that had begun the debate.
“A terrible event has befallen us,” Cornwall had said, “Two highly productive workers have been taken from us. They have been killed. This was not natural causes, nor was it an accident. They were murdered. Make no mistake, this madman will be caught. When he is, he will face the only justice appropriate to such a heinous crime. But we must not let this distract us from the great work ahead of us. We must not lose focus. We must continue, together, to strive for our future, our children’s future, and the future of our City, our Britain.”
Ely knew, well enough, that Cornwall had only wanted to get the statement out before Stirling and Henley. Nonetheless, he felt a small sense of betrayal that he had not been informed first. And who had said the killer was a man?
What had really surprised Ely was the response from the citizenry. The newsfeeds were already full of articles, written mostly by off-duty workers from the other Towers. They all focused on the implications of lost labour, and had turned the debate to that of productivity. Ely had thought that the workers in Tower-One, being closer to the crime and its inherent threat, would have responded differently, yet they too seemed more concerned with the debate on population increase than the immediate danger.
Ely tried, once more, to concentrate on the schematics.
“What if we were to reduce the school leaving age?” The woman’s voice broke through his concentration. “Councillor Cornwall has hinted he’s going to consider it when he’s Chancellor.”
“If. If he’s elected,” someone else said. There was a general laugh at that.
“That’s missing the point…” The man began to repeat, and misquote, a speech that Cornwall had given a few days before.
Ely ignored him. An idea had just struck him. He’d started by reasoning that the killer must have known the Greenes. He refused to believe, and hoped he was right, that the killer had chosen them randomly. So he had begun by getting the system to identify which of the forty-seven suspects had had any contact with the victims. What he’d quickly discovered was that, since the Greenes were on the same shift as the suspects, each of them had come into contact with the victims dozens of times each week. It was after that, when he was beginning to doubt he would find any evidence before the Chancellor decided to throw him to the wolves, that the idea came to him.
All he had to do was check the schematics, and see which of the suspects could actually get from their pod to the victims unit, and back, within the time they were off-net. Out of the forty-seven suspects, Silas Glastonbury had spent the shortest time off-net. Unlike the Greenes, he was single and had spent the shift in question in a unit on the level below. According to the same record, he had been off-net from 02:58:45 to 03:04:18.
Ely had looked again at the schematics and decided that whilst it was theoretically possible for the man to have made it to Unit 6-4-17 and back in under five and a half minutes, it was unlikely. Certainly it was unlikely that anyone could do it whilst being so careful that they weren’t caught on camera. Which meant Glastonbury was almost definitely not the killer. At the same time, it was too much of a coincidence for the man not to be somehow involved. Interrogating him should lead to an explanation of what the other forty-six were doing and thus eliminate most of them from his enquiries. At the very least, it would give the impression of action. He stood up and left the lounge.
As he rode the elevator to the upper levels, he checked the time. It was only ten minutes until shift-change. He considered waiting and arresting Glastonbury quietly as the man left the Assembly, but dismissed the idea almost instantly. He wanted the citizenry to think he was doing something. More than that, he wanted to wreak a small piece of revenge upon Chancellor Stirling. Glastonbury was one of Stirling’s few registered supporters in Tower-One. Arresting him publicly would be the price the Chancellor would pay for her disdain.
Ely checked the feed from the camera on Glastonbury’s visor. The man sat in front of a section of conveyor belt no different than any of the hundreds of others in the Tower. To his left, a panel rose, and a piece of circuitry moved along the belt to stop in front of him. In Glastonbury’s right hand was a sensor. He moved it down to touch a section of wiring. A light in front turned green. With his left hand he pressed a button. The conveyor belt moved, taking the approved circuitry off, and bringing a new piece in its place.
It seemed nearly identical to the same dull work that Ely remembered doing himself during his brief time in the Assemblies. It was monotonous, it was repetitive, and it was utterly vital. There would be no way of replacing, nor repairing, a faulty component once the ships were launched. It was why a place on the first ship was so coveted. With each successive journey, the risk of some catastrophic failure increased.
The elevator stopped.
As Ely walked along the corridor towards the Assembly in which Glastonbury worked, he brought up the records for the other workers. There were two teams of six with one supervisor. Discounting the suspect, and a worker who didn’t wear one, that left eleven people with visors to record and upload the arrest. Fortuitously, Ely saw that one of those workers had the fifth most popular newsfeed in the City. Ely smiled. Everyone would know about the arrest before the next shift had begun.
He hesitated at the door and brought up the view from the cameras inside. The citizens were still working. He waited.
A few minutes later an alarm sounded, and the conveyor belts rolled forwards empty. The shift had finished. One by one, the workers began to stand up. Ely overrode the clean room protocols – with the components all sealed away, and the drones about to sanitise the room, there was no risk of contamination – and opened the door.
“Silas Glastonbury,” he said, imbuing his voice with all the menace he could muster. All heads turned to stare at him. Ely was gratified to see the small red lights on the visors come on. They were recording. “Glastonbury,” Ely said again as he walked into the low ceilinged room. “You’re under arrest.”
And now some of the lights turned green, indicating they were uploading live. Glastonbury stood frozen in place.
“Put your hands on your head,” Ely said, more quietly now that he had the entire room’s attention.
“I’m… But my work. It’s vital,” Glastonbury stammered.
“All work is vital. That’s why I waited until the shift was over,” Ely said. He could see fear in the man’s eyes and he recognised it as the fear of a guilty man, caught.
“I… but… I…” The man stammered, and he started to back away from the Constable.
Ely had had enough. He grabbed the man’s right arm, twisted it up and behind his back. “Go on, I’ve questions you need to answer,” he said, pushing the man towards the door. Conscious of the cameras, he didn’t do it gently.