Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [27]
‘Hey, Forrester,’ yelled a small man with a large moustache, ‘who’s your friend?’
‘He’s no friend, Susko,’ Forrester shouted back, ‘he’s a rookie!’
‘An’ he’s shakin’ cos he’s squired to Forrester,’ another voice bellowed.
‘Nah, it’s the thought of working out of the same station as you, Lubineki,’
Susko rejoined.
The room erupted in laughter. Forrester left them to it. Finding an unoccupied table for two, she sat Cwej down.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. He’d been repeating the same words ever since they left the interrogation truck. While he had stood by the door, looking back inside with a dazed expression on his golden-furred face, Forrester had called a bot over to guard the truck and sent another one to Adjudicator Secular Rashid with a message.
‘Brain embolism,’ she said calmly. The best way to bring him out of it was to be calm. ‘It happens.’
His face was etched with lines of worry. ‘But . . . a suspect, dying in custody.
We’ll be slaughtered! The Adjudicator Secular will hang us out to dry!’
‘I doubt it,’ she said, punching an order for coffee into the tablecomp. ‘We’ve still got the probe evidence. She was guilty, there’s no denying that. All we’ve done is anticipate the sentence.’
‘That’s not the point! We –’
She banged the table, shutting him up and sending a tiny ripple of tension around the room. ‘That’s the way centcomp will see it,’ she insisted, holding 46
his gaze. ‘We’re good cops. We’ve got good records. The underdweller was a murderer. Case closed.’
He seemed to relax slightly. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure? Of course I’m sure.’
A multi-armed bot passed by and deposited two steaming coffees on the table. Forrester sipped at hers and put it down again, grimacing at the heat.
Cwej swigged his without apparently noticing. ‘I wonder . . . ’ he said.
‘What? What do you wonder?’
‘Well, no. It was probably nothing.’
‘If you want.’
‘Like you said, I’m not familiar with the equipment.’
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
He caught his lower lip between sharp little teeth.
‘Don’t do that,’ she added. ‘It makes you look like a kid.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Now, what is it?’
‘Well, it was the spike. The murder weapon.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, when I bagged it, I noticed that it had a scratch on it.’
Forrester thought back. ‘Yes, I remember. So what?’
‘Well, I couldn’t help noticing that on the probe, it didn’t. Not when she was committing the murder.’
She tried to remember the picture on the screen. ‘It was very fuzzy,’ she said dubiously. ‘You couldn’t possibly tell.’
‘But I could!’ he said excitedly. ‘You could see it from all angles on the probe screen. Nothing. Not a scratch anywhere.’
‘So – so what are you saying?’
He looked down at the table. ‘I’m saying that the spike we bagged is a real one, and the one on the record is a simulated one. I’m saying that the real one has a scratch but the simulated one is perfect. Too perfect.’
‘Let me get this right. You’re saying –’
‘I’m saying that I think the mind probe record was faked,’ he muttered, too low for the rest of the Adjudicators to hear.
‘You what? Are you mad?’
‘Mind probe records can be faked. You know that.’
Forrester couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Yeah, but do you know what sort of technology is needed? Do you know how much it costs?’
He nodded mutely.
‘And you think anybody is going to go to all that trouble for an underdweller?’ she added. She was lacing her words with as much sarcasm as she 47
could possibly muster, and Cwej was wilting under it. ‘So who’s responsible, then?’
He shook his head silently. It looked to her like he was on the verge of tears.
Goddess, what were they teaching the kids at the Academy these days?’
‘Fine,’ she said, quieter. ‘Let’s hear no more about it then.’
‘I know what I saw,’ he insisted stubbornly, not meeting her eyes.
‘Yeah, I know what you saw too. An illusion. Something that wasn’t there.’
‘Easy way to check.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Go back through the mind probe record.’
‘No,’ she shouted. ‘I am not pandering