Rule 34 - Charles Stross [88]
That’s the thing about talking to the police: You’ve got to tell them the truth, and nothing but the truth—just don’t tell them all of it. They’ve got speech-to-text software and natural language analysers, proximity- and probability-matching tools controlled by teleworkers in off-shore networks—a mechanical turk—to make tag clouds out of everything you say within earshot of one of their mikes. It may not be true AI, but it can flag up inconsistencies if you’re lying. They don’t need that shit for 90 per cent of the job, the routine public-order offences, drunk and disorderly, but you can bet your shirt that everything said within a hundred metres of a suspicious death gets chewed up by the mechanical turk . . .
“Go on,” she prompts.
“Tariq’s a smart boy. Runs a dating website: The spin for the old folks is that it’s a virtual dhallal, a marriage brokerage, with chat rooms so the boys and girls can get to talk to each other safely—but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it’s a knocking shop as well. The parents can register user IDs and track their kids’ conversations, but there are some areas of the site that, well, they’re age-filtered: It’s the twenty-first century, innit? Oh, by ‘kids’ I mean it’s strictly over-eighteens only. Because it’s supposed to be about finding suitable partners for marriage, not one-night stands.”
You run down. Not that you’re giving her more than the most superficial gloss on how Tariq set up the tagging system and real-time chat to show the old farts a very skewed view of the system; or the block-booked hotel rooms that users can sublet by the hour (at a 500–per cent mark-up for Tariq), or the proximity-matching service for halal doggers—pay your money, enter your preferences, go to this hotel room at that time and a suitable partner will be waiting for you—but Inspector Butthurt isn’t an idiot.
She nods thoughtfully. “Nobody gets killed because of a dating website. What do you suspect, my friend?”
She’s pushing your buttons but letting some morsels slip. The deadening fear is back: The man with the empty eyes, his luggage in your attic. The Gnome’s outrageous proposition. Tariq’s memory stick. “I suspect—I don’t know anything for a fact—Tariq was into other stuff, too.”
“Other stuff? Like what you were arrested for last time?”
Your mouth is dry. You nod. “I’m out of that, I swear. I’ve got a wife and kids to look after. And this.” You twitch your phone, which chooses that moment to vibrate again. It’s less intrusive than the old leg-tags, but no less an imposition. “And a respectable job.”
“A job?” She raises an eyebrow.
“Yes.” You need to rub her nose in it, make her recognize that you’re a man of consequence these days. “I handle the consular affairs in Scotland of the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan. I have diplomatic connections now, you know! I am required to be a man of utmost respect. And so Tariq knows he must leave me out of his madcap schemes.”
“Wow.” It’s the nearest thing to an admission of surprise you’ve ever heard from Inspector Butthurt. So worldly cynical is she (from dealing with the scum of the earth on a shift-work basis) that it is clearly a test of her self-control. A lesser inspector would be shouting their disbelief in your ear. “Does your probation officer know about this?”
“Of course he does!” you splutter. She shakes her head, and a very curious expression steals across her face. Respect or what? “You can confirm my credentials with the Foreign Office,” you add haughtily.
“Ah, that won’t be necessary.” It’s glassy-eyed disbelief, you decide, twitching your security blanket of smugness closer. At last you’ve broken through her shell of assumed white English privilege. But she doesn’t let the moment last. “Back to Tariq. What else can you tell me about him?”
“He was always too smart for his own good.” You realize abruptly that you’re never going to see him again, never engage in his line of crazy banter,