She kept protesting, and he kept silent, until they reached the corridor with the wrecked elevator.
“I said, where are—” She froze when she saw the debris.
“Here. Do you recognise her?” He pushed her closer to the wreckage, and the body that still lay within it.
“No,” she said softly, when she saw the body.
“Who is she?” Ely asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Ely pushed her against the wall.
“Look down at what she’s wearing. Go on. Look. Recognise it?”
She glanced down, then hurriedly looked away.
“You should recognise it. Now tell me how you know her!”
“I don’t,” she said, keeping her eyes resolutely ahead.
“The pattern is unique,” Ely said. “They always are. It only took a few minutes to work out who printed it. You did. Five days ago.”
“I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
“You know that woman. You helped her.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I never met her before.”
“You were in the lounge when I tried to arrest her. She was going there to meet you, wasn’t she? Tell me why?”
“She wasn’t. I really don’t—”
“Then explain how she’s wearing your clothing.”
“How can I? I don’t even remember wearing it. I don’t remember wearing anything that looked like that. I just select a random pattern every day. The old clothes go into the recycler.”
“Which one?” he asked.
“The one in whichever ‘home’ I’m allocated of course.”
“Really?” He took a step back. “Is that the best you can come up with?”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“You know, if this was the first time your name came up today I might believe you. I might just think this was a coincidence. But it’s not the first time. You were awake when the Greenes were killed. Awake and off-net.”
“I wasn’t—” she began. Ely cut her off.
“You were. I’ve got the proof. You were in the shower. For twenty minutes. Every night for the past year you’ve done the same. Except I don’t think you were. Who spends twenty minutes in the shower? No, you used that as a cover. How did you learn about the glitch with the hot water? Who told you?”
She stared at him, and he saw the fear in her eyes.
“I know that you found out about it first. And then you told others,” he guessed. Barely perceptibly, there was a tightening of her jaw and a stiffening of her shoulders. Ely nodded. He’d guessed right. “Who told you about it?” he asked. For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she looked around, and seemed to realise that she was truly alone.
“But,” she said, “surely you can’t think that has anything to do with the murders.”
“Tell me.”
She hesitated, then glanced again at the body before answering.
“There was a note,” she said, quietly.
“Where? I’ve checked your correspondence. You didn’t receive one.”
“It wasn’t in the system. It wasn’t digital. It was handwritten.” Now there was a glint of defiance in her eyes. “It wasn’t left for me. It was stuck in the door to the shower cubicle. Whoever woke first would have seen it.”
“What did it say?”
“It just said that anyone could get that extra shower at three a.m. That was all.”
“And you told others?” he asked.
“Yes. So what?”
“Don’t you know how much energy that wastes?”
“Like I said,” she retorted, “so what?”
He stared at her. She didn’t blink. “Was that the only note you received?” he asked.
“You know what? I’m not saying another word,” she replied. “So you better just charge me and send me over to Tower-Thirteen and let them send me off to the launch site, because,” she leaned forward, and spoke more softly, “I think I have a better chance over there than I do here.”
He took another step back. She knew about the colony ships. There must have been another note. He opened his mouth to get her to confirm it, but then he closed it again. The conversation was being recorded. Cornwall would be watching, and Ely wasn’t meant to know.
He tapped out a message and sent it to Councillor Cornwall, asking what sentence he should give. A moment later, he received a terse reply. ‘Defer sentencing for now. We will deal with it after the election.’
“No,” he said to Penrith, “I’m not sending you to Tower-Thirteen.”
He watched her face and saw her defiance replaced by dismay. And then he was certain she knew.
“You got your confession,” Vauxhall said, when Ely returned to the Control Room, ten minutes later. He’d escorted Penrith back to her ‘home’ in silence.
“Some of it,” he said.
“You got enough, surely. You got her to admit her guilt. That means you’ve got proof on all forty-seven suspects. The killer is dead, what else is there to worry about.”
“There’s still no connection between Penrith and that ghost,” Ely said.
“There’s the clothing. That’s connection enough, surely.”
“Well, what about the system. Can you work out who hacked into it and how?” he asked.
“Does it matter, Ely? I mean, does it really matter? When the next shift starts, the voting will begin, and you’ll be elected to the council. It’s a certainty. Cornwall will be Chancellor, then there will be the ballot for the first of the colony ships. So does it really matter?”
“What if the person behind all this ends up on Mars?” Ely asked.
“So you’re determined to keep digging?”
“Voting hasn’t started yet. We need to find the connection between Penrith and the ghost. Then we need to find out who wiped the system.”
“What if that was the ghost herself?” she asked. “Isn’t that the most logical explanation?”
Ely thought of Stirling. “I don’t know,” he said. “Is it?”
“I think you need to sleep. Get some rest, get some food. Look at it again next shift.”
“Not yet,” Ely said. There were still seven hours until voting began, that meant seven more hours in which Stirling could try to disrupt the election. “I need to find that gun.”
He returned to the museum and spent an hour looking for the weapon. He couldn’t find it. There were so many nooks and crannies that any small object, be it gun or knife, could be hidden and never found. Maybe, he thought, when he was Councillor he could have the room completely emptied out. Then he wondered whom he could trust. And then he remembered that once the election was over, it really wouldn’t matter.
He sat down on a stack of stone slabs. A long time ago someone had gone to the trouble of carving the surface into the shape of men on horses chasing one another. Time had worn away most of the features. He picked at the edge of the stone, and asked himself what he was trying to prove, and to whom he was trying to prove it.
The weapon could have been hidden up in the museum. It could have been hidden in one of the access ladders. He rarely used those and knew the other civic servants used them even less than he did. Or it could be down in the tunnels, or the recycling room, or one of the storage rooms. There were, now he thought about it, hundreds of places to hide something that small. He would never find it.
“Control?”
“Ely? Did you find it?”
“No. I don’t think I will.” He was exhausted. It had been a full day since he’d slept, and less than a shift until voting began. For now, all he could do was hope that the dead ghost was the killer, and any other agents of Stirling’s wouldn’t have the stomach for murder. “You were right. I’m tired. I’m going to get some sleep.”