Vic said, ‘And you can bet he’s back to doing what he does.’
He was gripping the steering wheel with both hands, overtaking everything on the ring road. Swarms of mopeds, cars, trucks, a road train of five container units hauled by a big diesel rig with chromed exhausts, headlights and the spots above its high cab blazing. There was a faint pinkish tinge in the lower part of the sky. A thousand kilometres to the west, the dust storm was getting close to Idunn’s Valley. Farmers were rounding up livestock and shutting them in barns, harvesting crops and unripe fruit, wrapping trees in orchards and vines in vineyards in shrouds of bubblewrap, sheeting over greenhouses. There had been a piece about it on the TV news that morning.
Vic said, ‘You know the reason for the sting that wrecked Alain’s case? The Mayor was up for re-election and one of the supporters of his chief opponent was in McBride’s pocket. So the Mayor put pressure on the police commissioner to arrest McBride, hoping to smear his opponent. But McBride wouldn’t give up his friends, ate the prison sentence to keep his political influence. Remember that when you talk to him. He’s smart, and he has influence in high places.’
Skip said, ‘You know, I met him at a reception a few months back. I’d forgotten all about it until I saw his mug shot.’
‘This was when you were driving for the Mayor.’
‘It wasn’t just driving. I was part of the close-protection team, I had to stand with him at parties, official receptions. Any place public.’
‘The Mayor being such a popular, fun-loving guy.’
‘He was always straight with me. A regular bloke.’
‘Who needs a bunch of bodyguards in case one of his many enemies tries to take a pop at him.’
‘He knows he isn’t going to win the next election. He’s okay with it. Anyway, McBride was at this reception. One held by the British consul.’
‘McBride being a fine upstanding representative of everything that puts the great into Great Britain.’
‘There were all kinds of people there. Everyone in black tie or cocktail dresses. McBride shook hands with the Mayor. They exchanged a few words. He seemed to know a lot of people.’
‘We should keep this meeting nice and informal,’ Vic said. ‘A routine enquiry about where McBride was last night. He’ll want to know why. Tell him it’s about a suspected murder, but don’t give away any details. Don’t even mention Redway’s name. Save all that for the actual interrogation.’
‘I know how to handle a suspect,’ Skip said.
‘This is a murder investigation. A horse of another colour.’
‘Look, can I ask you a question?’
‘That’s why I’m here. To give you the benefit of my years of experience.’
‘Were you trying to hand off the case because you think I’m not up to it?’
‘Of course not. I was trying to do Alain a favour. You too, for that matter.’
Skip seemed to buy that. Or at least, he didn’t push it. He said, ‘Just to be clear, I should be the one asking the questions when we get into it with McBride.’
‘It’s your case, Investigator Gayle. Go to it.’
Cal McBride’s house was set in a green garden behind a perimeter wall, a low rambling building with a red-tile roof. A square tower at one corner rose three storeys to a crenellated top. A big flag divided diagonally between red and black flapped in the brisk wind up there.
‘I believe that’s the anarchist flag,’ Vic said. ‘Looks like your man likes to think of himself as a libertarian. The kind that doesn’t believe in the law until someone steals their shit, and then they can’t get enough of the police.’
He and Skip were waiting beside their car, at the arched gateway. No one had answered when Skip had buzzed the intercom at the locked gate; if anyone was inside they weren’t in a hurry to check them out.
‘It doesn’t look like anyone’s in,’ Skip said, after a couple of minutes.
‘A place like this, someone is always in, keeping watch. Why do you think he built that tower? Lean on the horn again. Or wait, let me try something else.’
Vic reached through the open window of the car and hit the switch that activated the siren and the lights. The noise echoing down the broad curved street where other big houses stood behind high walls or hedges. Bel Air, the residential quarter of Petra favoured by top UN officials, diplomats and business people. The Mayor had a house two streets over.
Someone came out of the house and walked along the drive. A short tubby man in jeans and a roll-neck sweater, squinting against the blue stutter of the car’s LEDs, asking — shouting — to please turn that fucking thing off, you’ve made your point.
Vic flicked the switch, walked up to the gate in the sudden silence. The man staring at him through the bars, saying, ‘You got a warrant?’
‘Why would we need a warrant? This is just a social call.’
‘I don’t let in any police without a warrant.’
‘David Carson,’ Skip said. He had put on his spex. ‘Aka Little Dave. Came up here five years ago, served six months for failing to do mandatory civil work on arrival, with an additional two months for three counts of burglary.’
The man spat between his feet. He had the truculent look of someone always ready to be disappointed by life. ‘You can’t walk down the fucking street without some cop glassing you and getting in your face.’
‘We aren’t here to talk about your misdemeanours,’ Skip said. ‘We want to talk to Cal McBride.’
‘He isn’t here.’
‘I’d like to check that for myself.’
‘I tell you he isn’t here, then he isn’t here.’
‘And when someone like you tells me that the sun is shining,’ Vic said, beginning to lose his patience, ‘I immediately phone the weather bureau, ask the chief meteorologist if that’s the case. So why don’t you open the gate.’
‘He isn’t here,’ the man, Little Dave, said. ‘Phone who you like, it won’t change things. And if you want to come in you need a warrant.’
They stood there with the bars of the gate between them, in the shadow of the tall archway.
Vic said, ‘Investigator Williams, would you mind giving me the warrant so I can show it to this man?’
They’d talked about how to do this on the way over.
‘Sure thing,’ Skip said, and handed over a sheet of blue paper folded three times.
Vic took a step closer to the gate, held up the folded paper, its edge just touching the bars, twitched it back when Little Dave snatched at it. The man lunged without thinking, and Vic dropped the folded sheet of paper — a crime-scene form — and grabbed his forefinger and bent it up.
Little Dave gasped, his face turned sideways and pressed against the bars.
‘Careful,’ Vic said, bending the finger a little more. ‘If you move the wrong way it might break. Now, how about opening the gate?’
‘Let me go, you fucker.’
‘After you open the gate.’
‘I can’t do it when you’ve got my fucking finger!’
Vic said, ‘You have a phone, don’t you? Call the man watching us through the security camera up there. Tell him to do it. Then you can take me to your leader.’
They walked up the drive, lawns and beds of heather and conifers on either side. Plants from Earth. Ferns growing in a wrinkled hump of native rock.
‘Must be a lot of work, keeping these alive,’ Vic said.
Little Dave didn’t answer. He was flexing his right hand, scowling.
‘Those floodlights, I suppose they keep things growing during the night-year,’ Vic said. ‘Places like this, they shine as bright as day then. But I’m wondering, what will happen to all this when the dust storm hits?’