The soft whine of the air-cycler brought him back to the present. The room would be needed for the next shift. He would have to find time, later, to go through the family’s activity more carefully.
“Control, come in.”
“I haven’t anything for you yet, Constable,” Vauxhall said, testily.
“I’ve something else for you to add to your list.”
“What?”
“I want you to tag everyone that the Greenes came in contact with.”
“Since when?”
“Let’s start with this week and go back…” Yes, he thought. “Six months. The killer had to have known the victims,” he added for the benefit of the recording.
“Fine. But I can only do one thing at a time.” She clicked off before Ely could ask her anything else.
He looked again at the pod, then at the door to the night-side, then at the door to the day-side, and then down at the floor. It was clean, he realised. He opened the night-side door and stepped out into the corridor again.
“Control.”
“Oh, what now?”
“Turn the lights in the night-side corridor on full.”
They snapped on, turning the dimly light hallway brighter than day. It took a moment for Ely’s eyes to adjust. He peered down at the floor.
After the brief training period, Arthur had given Ely access to the library’s collection of forensics and criminology books. He’d started to read all four, but the language had been so archaic, the content referencing so many things outside of his own experiences he’d not finished any of them. Some of the academic papers had been easier to read. In one of those, he remembered reading something about blood trails, and that was what he was looking for. He didn’t find one.
He went back into the unit and opened the door to the day-side. There the light was bright enough to see the floor. There was no blood. He checked the logs. The drones weren’t scheduled to clean until just before the end of the shift. That, he thought, left only one possibility. He went back inside the unit.
Everyone wore the same style of tight fitting jumpsuit. Each shift, a worker’s height, weight, and shape were measured and recorded, and not just for health reasons. That data was used to ensure that each set of clothes was made with the minimum amount of material. There were no pockets, folds or creases in which a weapon of any kind could be stored. Ely reasoned that if the blade had been in the killer’s hand, then a blood trail would have been left in the corridor outside. But what if the killer hadn’t taken the weapon with them?
There were few places within the room for it to be hidden. It couldn’t be in the children’s pods, they hadn’t been opened the night before. The children would have seen it if it was left in the toilet or shower. There hadn’t been time to dismantle any of the wall panels, so that left only the obvious; the recycling chute.
There was no space in the Tower for storing personal possessions. Nor was there energy to waste in washing crockery or cleaning clothes. These items, both printed of the same material, were disposed of in a recycling chute. Each hab-unit had one. Anything placed in the chute would end up in one of the electro-chemical baths down on Level One, where it would be broken down and reconstituted into fibre-gel, ready to be used again.
The chute was a foot square. Ely pulled on the handle. It was empty, but it was large enough to contain the murder weapon. He tapped out a command.
“Control,” he said. “I’ve stopped the recycling from this hab-unit. Can you confirm?”
“I can confirm you’ve stopped it for that entire floor.”
Ely cursed. “I just need whatever was thrown out from this unit, last shift,” he said.
“You can’t isolate it, Ely.”
He cursed again.
“Why did you want to stop it?” she asked.
“I think the murder weapon, a blade of some kind, was dropped down the chute.”
“That’s possible. Hang on.” There was a pause. “How big a blade?”
“Between nine and twelve inches, probably with a handle at either end. I don’t think it was straight, but possibly curved.” He was guessing, and doing so for the benefit of the recording.
“Well, I’m looking at the schematics. Five feet down the chute there are a series of grinders that shred the clothing into one-inch pieces. Four feet below that are a set of rollers that flatten the pieces, then there’s another set of grinders after that.”
“You’re saying the weapon wouldn’t fit?”
“I think it could fit, I just don’t think it could survive. There’s no blockage reported. So if it was dropped down there, it’s been mulched, just like the clothing.”
“And at the bottom? Would any of it be left?”
“Nothing larger than a fibre. Depending on what it was made of, it’ll have been recycled, or ended up stuck to the bottom of the vat. If you put in a request to have them emptied, and—”
“No. Forget it. How long does all of that take?”
“To reprocess something? Thirty minutes. At most. If the weapon went down there, it’s gone.”
He sighed. He wasn’t going to empty the vats. It was a task that had to be done by hand, and that would require requisitioning workers from one of the Assemblies. With the loss of a quarter of a million hours already that shift, he knew he wouldn’t get the authority to do it. There was still the question of what, exactly, the weapon had been. The obvious answer was something from one of the Assemblies. He checked the logs. No tools had been reported missing. He tapped out a message, asking the supervisors to manually check, but he stopped himself before sending it. They would want to know the reason for the request. Whatever explanation he gave them, the message he sent would be leaked to the newsfeeds. He didn’t think either Councillor Cornwall or the Chancellor would be happy with that.
He checked the time. He was surprised to see that two hours had passed. He had to clear the room for the next shift. That meant he had to get rid of the bodies. That at least, he knew how to do. He called the infirmary.
“What?” Nurse Gower answered.
“I’ve two bodies here. I need them collected.”
“Two bodies? In one shift? How did…” she began, then stopped. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t care. You need to come up to the infirmary and sentence Grimsby. You do that and we’ll come and take care of your bodies.”
“No,” Ely said deciding that, for once, he’d pull rank. “You come down here and get these bodies. The unit is needed next shift.” Because Grimsby did need to be dealt with, he added, “and afterwards, I’ll come back up with you to deal with Grimsby. Unless you want four people from the next shift sleeping up in the infirmary.”
“We’re on our way,” she snapped.
Ely took his helmet off and looked at the room just with his eyes. The Greenes had entered, then gone to sleep. Someone had come in and murdered them. Whoever it was hadn’t hesitated. Nor had they lingered after the deed was done. The killer hadn’t been monitored coming into the room, nor in the corridor outside it. He found himself looking at the camera.
“Control. That camera. When was it moved?”
“One thing at a time, Ely. I’ll add that to the list.”