Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [60]
A chilly breeze swirled across the lake. Sita suddenly shivered. ‘You don’t buy that?’
He snorted. ‘Smells like Hakai public relations to me. Usual scam. No evidence, no investigation - no crime. Anybody asks: blame the computer. Killings are bad for the image, am I right?’
It sounded reasonable to Sita. So that was it then. Probably a courier: currency, drugs, biologicals, who knew? Serious hauler anyway. And they caught up with him in the low-rent public washrooms on the Hakai Orbital Transfer Station.
Someone caught up with him there. Someone heavy and professional. And he’s dead. Fitting sort of end for someone like him. End of trail. End of story. Did it sound reasonable?
It sounded reasonable. There were holes... Forget the holes, she thought. Be grateful to Driftblubber here for getting her off an increasingly sharp-feeling hook. ‘How did you make the connection?’
‘Routine booking check. Norbert arrived on the OTS but he didn’t leave. There was an unidentified corpse around that time.’
‘Two and two,’ Sita said.
Driftkiller nodded. ‘Elementary police work.’
It was elementary police work Sita had already done, only there’d been no mention of a corpse when she checked. How could that have happened? She shivered again. ‘And we’ve got nothing on the dead man at all?’
Driftkiller shrugged. ‘Witness statement has him as some kind of slope.’
Sita frowned. Some kind of slope?
Catching the reaction Driftkiller elaborated: ‘He looked like a dink seemingly; well what they said was: Western-zone features.’
Sita felt the hook bite hard again. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t her man. The corpse wasn’t him. The bastard was still out there. She was very cold now. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I owe you one.’
Driftkiller was not impressed. ‘Unhuh, like you plan to pay me back,’ he said.
‘Maybe I already have.’
‘How’s that?’ Several ornamental waterfowl stomped up from the lake demanding to be fed and he tossed them some crumbs too.
Major Sita Benovides smiled thinly and said: ‘By deciding not to pay you back?’
Sergeant Lars Driftkiller Ronick looked at her for a long moment then he laughed. ‘You officer-class types talk a good fight, girlie,’ he said, cramming a second burger into his mouth.
Leela had never seen anything quite like the Aerospace Main spaceport.
Nenron had used an official Court of Attack lock-up authorisation, which he was not supposed to have, to drive the runner directly into one of the more discreet access areas. He could have taken her through the normal entrance concourse, he explained, and because of who she was she would have been given the full VIP, as in Very Important Person, treatment, but with that would have gone the full crowd of curious onlookers. So he was pretending she was a VIP, as in Very Insignificant Prisoner, and was taking her in through the rule violators and minor lawbreakers holding cells. Leela was dressed as a cleaner, her disposable coveralls successfully concealing her Sevateem warrior garb, a protective hood and breathing filters bunched at her neck, already partially obscuring her face and available to hide it fully should the need arise.
Clearly Nenron was a familiar figure around the cells since he and the cleaner he was escorting were not challenged by any of the security guards as they made their way through the dingy corridors to one of the constantly descending elevator platforms that would take them down to the main public concourse.
When Leela stepped off the platform and into the huge, brightly lit underground complex, the first thing she was conscious of was the throng of seemingly lost and aimless people drifting backwards and forwards between shining information screens. People stared long and hard at these screens before reacting to what they were seeing. Eventually they responded singly, in pairs, in groups, and here and there in sudden small stampedes. Leela watched as they hurried up and down the moving pathways that linked floors on different levels. Each floor had its own identification screen at the point where the pathway reached it and some people