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By Root 1009 0

was visa-hunting. Someone with access to border-control records. They needed a vehicle they could get through Copula. They knew exactly who had form for not bothering to take their papers with them. Look at the positions.” I scribbled a crude map of Besźel. “Feder’s is taken first, but good on Mr. Feder, he and his staff have learnt their lesson, and he takes his paperwork with him now. When they realise that our criminals use it instead to drive here, to near where Mahmud parks hers. They jack it, fast, but Ms. Mahmud keeps her pass in the office now too, so after having made it look like a robbery, they dump it near the next in the list and move on.”

“And the next one’s Khurusch’s.”

“And he’s remained true to his previous tendency, and leaves his in the van. So they’ve got what they need, and it’s off to Copula Hall, and Ul Qoma.” Quiet.

“What the fuck is this?”

“It’s… looking dodgy, is what it is. It’s a very inside job. Inside what, I don’t know. Someone with access to arrest records.”

“What the fuck do we do? What do we do?” she said again after I was quiet too long.

“I don’t know.”

“We need to tell someone …”

“Who? Tell them what? We don’t have anything.”

“Are you …” She was about to say joking, but she was intelligent enough to see the truth of it.

“Correlations might be enough for us, but it’s not evidence, you know—not enough to do anything with.” We stared at each other. “Anyway … whatever this is … whoever …” I looked at the papers.

“They’ve got access to stuff that…” Corwi said.

“We need to be careful,” I said. She met my eyes. There was another set of long moments when neither of us spoke. We looked slowly around the room. I do not know what we were looking for but I suspect that she felt, in that moment, as suddenly hunted and watched and listened-to as she looked like she did.

“So what do we do?” she said. It was unsettling to hear alarm like that in Corwi’s voice.

“I guess what we’ve been doing. We investigate.” I shrugged slowly. “We have a crime to solve.”

“We don’t know who it’s safe to talk to, boss. Anymore.”

“No.” There was nothing else I could say, suddenly. “So maybe don’t talk to anyone. Except me.”

“They’re taking me off this case. What can I …?”

“Just answer your phone. If there’s stuff I can get you to do I’ll call.”

“Where does this go?”

It was a question that did not, at that point, mean anything. It was merely to fill the near noiselessness in the office, to cover up what noises there were, that sounded baleful and suspicious—each tick and creak of plastic an electronic ear’s momentary feedback, each small knock of the building the shift in position of a sudden intruder.

“What I would really like,” she said, “is to invoke Breach. Fuck them all, it would be just great to sic Breach on them. It would be great if this weren’t our problem.” Yes. The notion of Breach exacting revenge on whomever, for whatever this was. “She found something out. Mahalia.”

The thought of Breach had always seemed right. I remembered though, suddenly, the look on Mrs. Geary’s face. Between the cities, Breach watched. None of us knew what it knew.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“No?”

“Sure, it’s just… we can’t. So … we have to try to focus on this ourselves.”

“We? The two of us, boss? Neither of us knows what the fuck’s going on.”

Corwi was whispering by the end of the last sentence. Breach were beyond our control or ken. Whatever situation or thing this was, whatever had happened to Mahalia Geary, we two were its only investigators, so far as we could trust, and she would soon be alone, and I would be alone, too, and in a foreign city.

Part Two

UL QOMA

Chapter Twelve

THE INNARD ROADS OF COPULA HALL seen from a police car. We did not travel fast and our siren was off, but in some vague pomp our light flickered and the concrete around us was staccato blue-lit. I saw my driver glance at me. Constable Dyegesztan his name was, and I had not met him before. I had not been able to get Corwi even as my escort.

We had gone on the low flyovers through Besźel Old Town into the convolutes of Copula Hall