The City & the City - China Mieville [50]
With the help of the photographs provided by Inspector Borlú and his team, we heard, it had been ascertained that one of the vehicles passing through an official checkpoint in Copula Hall, into Ul Qoma from Besźel and back again, had been that in which the deceased body had been transported. Accordingly, while a heinous crime had been committed and must be investigated as a matter of urgency, the passage of the body from the murder site, though it appears it was in Ul Qoma, to the dumping ground in Besźel had not, in fact, involved breach. Passage between the two cities had been legal. There were, accordingly, no grounds to invoke Breach. No breach had been committed.
This is the sort of juridical situation to which outsiders react with understandable bewilderment. Smuggling, they regularly insist, for example. Smuggling is breach, yes? Quintessentially, yes? But no.
Breach has powers the rest of us can hardly imagine, but its calling is utterly precise. It is not the passage itself from one city to the other, not even with contraband: it is the manner of the passage. Throw felid or cocaine or guns from your Besź rear window across a crosshatched yard into an Ul Qoman garden for your contact to pick up—that is breach, and Breach will get you, and it would still be Breach if you threw bread or feathers. Steal a nuclear weapon and carry it secretly with you through Copula Hall when you cross but cross that border itself? At that official checkpoint where the cities meet? Many crimes are committed in such an act, but breach is not one of them.
Smuggling itself is not breach, though most breach is committed in order to smuggle. The smartest dealers, though, make sure to cross correctly, are deeply respectful of the cities’ boundaries and pores, so if they are caught they face only the laws of one or other or both places, not the power of Breach. Perhaps Breach considers the details of those crimes once a breach is committed, all the transgressions in Ul Qoma or Besźel or both, but if so it is only once and because those crimes are functions of breach, the only violation Breach punishes, the existential disrespect of Ul Qoma’s and Besźel’s boundaries.
The theft of the van and the dumping of the body in Besźel were illegal. The murder in Ul Qoma was horribly so. But what we had assumed was the particular transgressive connection between the events had never taken place. All passage had appeared scrupulously legal, effected through official channels, paperwork in place. Even if the permits were faked, the travel through the borders in Copula Hall made it a question of illegal entry, not of breach. That is a crime you might have in any country. There had been no breach.
“THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT.”
I walked back and forth between Gadlem’s desk and the frozen car on-screen, the conveyance of the victim. “This is bullshit. We’ve been screwed.”
“It is bullshit, he tells me,” Gadlem said to the world. “He tells me we’ve been screwed.”
“We’ve been screwed, sir. We need Breach. How the hell are we supposed to do this? Someone somewhere is trying to freeze this where it stands.”
“We’ve been screwed he tells me, and I note he tells me so as if I am disagreeing with him. Which when last I looked I was not doing.”
“Seriously what …”
“In fact it could be said I agree with him on a startling scale. Of course we’ve been screwed, Borlú. Stop spinning like a drunk dog. What do you want me to say? Yes, yes, yes this is bullshit; yes someone has done this to us. What would you have me do?”
“Something! There must be something. We could appeal …”
“Look, Tyador.” He steepled his fingers. “We are both in accord about what’s happened here. We’re both pissed off that you are still on this case. For different reasons perhaps but—” He waved that away. “But here’s the problem you’re not addressing. While yes we can both agree the sudden recovery of this footage smells not a little, and that we appear to be bits of tinfoil-on-string to some malevolent government kitten, yes yes yes but, Borlú, however they’ve come by the evidence,