Renne just caught a glimpse of a young man standing in a doorway to one of the verandas along the front. He quickly stepped back through an open door into the dimly lit interior. “Sorry about that,” Renne said. “But I do want to catch the people who did this to you.”
“Isabella said you never would, that we’d just be another ongoing file your office would forget about after a month.”
“That’s an interesting comment. Normally, I would have agreed with her—off the record, of course.”
Trisha gave a listless shrug. “Has something happened?”
“I’m not sure. First of all, I need to know if you’ve remembered anything about Howard Liang that might be relevant, something which you’d overlooked before.”
“Such as?”
“Something that didn’t make sense at the time. Perhaps something he said. Something simple that he should have known, like a piece of history, or a Dynasty name. Or did you ever meet anyone by surprise, someone he was uncomfortable around.”
“Don’t think so, no. I can’t remember anything like that.”
“How about an incident from his childhood. If he grew up on Far Away he had a very different upbringing from ordinary Commonwealth children. Something might have slipped out that seemed odd.”
“No. That’s what the reporter asked as well.”
“What reporter?”
“Er.” Trisha’s fingers fluttered slightly, puppeting her virtual hand. “Brad Myo. He was from Earl News. He said he’d got your permission to talk to me.” She gave Renne an anxious look. “Didn’t he?”
Renne became very still, something like a ghost’s finger was stroking her spine. “No,” she said quietly. “We don’t issue any authorization to reporters to do anything, let alone talk to crime victims. That’s up to individual citizens.” To her surprise, Trisha started crying. The girl sank down onto the towel, great sobs shaking her shoulders.
“I’m so fucking stupid,” she wailed, and started hitting her fists against her legs. “Does everybody in the Commonwealth know? Why am I so gullible? He said you’d allowed him to see me so he could produce a sympathetic story. I believed him, I really did. Oh, God, I hate myself. I didn’t know. He was so sincere.”
Renne gave Warren an awkward glance, then knelt beside the distraught girl. “Hey, come on. If this is who I think it was, he would have fooled me, too.” Her e-butler had already cross-referenced Earl News. It was in one of Paula’s reports. The company didn’t exist, but someone had used it once before when he interviewed Wendy Bose. According to Paula Myo, his description matched Bradley Johansson. “What did he look like?”
Trisha sniveled. “Tall. With really fair hair. And he was old. I don’t mean close to rejuvenation. You just knew he’d lived a couple of centuries at least.”
“Shit,” Renne hissed under her breath.
Trisha gave her an uncertain glance, tears ready to burst forth again.
“What? Do you know who it was?”
“He sounds like somebody known to us, yes.”
“Oh, no! I’m going to get a memory wipe, I swear I am. I’m going to wipe out my whole life; everything, what I’ve done, who I am, my name. All of it. Wipe it and not use a secure store.” She glared at Warren. “And if the Dynasty won’t do it, I’ll go to some illegal back street clinic. I don’t care. I’d rather wind up retarded than go through life knowing this.”
“Easy there,” Renne said. She rubbed the girl’s trembling shoulders.
“You’re being far too hard on yourself. Just tell me what happened with Brad Myo. Please?”
“Nothing much, I guess. He turned up at the apartment a day before I came back here. Isabella had already left, and Catriona had gone to work. He told me he’d cleared the meeting with you; that’s the only reason I let him in. I should have checked with you, shouldn’t I? God, how dumb!”
“It’s done now. Please, don’t beat yourself up over this. What did he want to know?”
“The same as you did. Howard’s name, where he worked, how long I’d known him. All the basics.”
“I see. Well, don’t worry, there’s no real harm done.”
“Really?” The girl was pathetically eager.
“Yes. He’s just a stupid con man trying to sell his story to a major news show. None of them will run it.”
“Absolutely not,” Warren assured her.
“Okay.”
“Has Isabella been in touch recently?” Renne asked, making it casual. “Her old address code isn’t working, and I need to ask her the same questions.”
“No.” Trisha lowered her head. “I haven’t talked to many people since I got back. I don’t want to. I wasn’t kidding when I said I want all this out of my brain. It’s too difficult.”
“I’m sure it seems that way. But don’t be too rash, will you?”
“Maybe.”
“Did Isabella say where she was going before she left Daroca?”
“She was going skiing on Jura. There was a whole bunch of them hiring a chalet together for a fortnight. She tried to get me to come along, but I didn’t want to. She’s always going on trips with friends.”
“Which friends, exactly?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t know any of them.”
“Okay. Never mind, we’ll look into it.” Renne stood up and gestured to Warren, who nodded. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, Trisha. I apologize for putting you through this, but you have been helpful.”
The girl simply nodded, not looking up. Renne regarded her with a touch of concern before walking back to the VTOL.
“So who was the reporter?” Warren asked as the hatch shut behind them.
Renne settled herself into the deep leather cushioning of the chair. “It could be Bradley Johansson himself. The description is about right, and he’s posed as a reporter before using that company name.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Yeah.” She watched through the oval window as the plane took off. The light green patch of meadow shrank away quickly behind them as the acceleration pressed her down.
“But that makes no sense,” Warren said. “What would Johansson need to see Trisha for? The operation was over.”
“Good question. And he took a hell of a risk going to see her, too, he even used Earl News as a cover, which we knew about. It’s not like him to be that sloppy. Those questions were clearly important to him.”
“Why?”
Renne shook her head. She didn’t quite trust herself to look directly at Warren. Unlike Trisha, he wasn’t stupid. There was one explanation that fitted all too easily. An explanation that had implications she really didn’t enjoy. It would also mean she’d been quite right about the whole shotgun setup from the very start. It wasn’t the Guardians after all. And I don’t think it was the Halgarths. Christabel had no reason to lie to me. That doesn’t leave many options.
***
Mark Vernon sat in his rented Ford Lapanto as the drive array steered it along the six-lane highway down through the northern tail of the Chunata hills that formed the back of New Costa’s Trinity district. The slopes with their brown native scrub bushes and desert palms were decorated with large white houses encased behind tall walls and hedges like precious artworks in an exclusive store. It was an area favored by financial management types, who never liked to stray far from the office. A line of composite and glass skyscrapers marked out Trinity’s eastern boundary, winding along the base of the hills. They were home to various banks, credit houses, brokers, venture capitalists, and offworld currency exchanges.
The Lapanto’s drive array turned the car off the highway. There was a junction at the bottom of the ramp, where an ancient road began its lazy curve around the hill. A dilapidated sign called it Bright Light Canyon. Mark switched off the drive array, and started driving the car himself. Gritty yellow-brown soil had almost completely covered the thin layer of asphalt, turning the road into little more than a dirt track. Dead-looking scrub bushes were scattered over the slope below and above, their lower trunks buttressed by the conical mounds of nipbug nests. Behind the swathe of arid vegetation were crumbling white walls of enzyme-bonded concrete, scaled by ivy and climbing cacti. Various private roads led off the main track, looping around to gates.