“But, sir,” Ely said, though he didn’t mean to, the words just came out, “the investigation isn’t over yet.”
“It isn’t?”
“There are still those forty-seven suspects. Someone had to be helping this woman. I mean, why else was she there in the lounge if she wasn’t there to make contact with one of them? We should find all the people involved and bring them to justice. All of them.”
“Yes, yes, I see. A crackdown. Yes, that could be just what we need. Continue your investigation. But, Constable, I want you to contact me before you question anyone. Voting begins in just over one shift’s time. We’re set for a remarkable victory. I can’t have… I mean, we can’t have anything upsetting the electorate.”
“No sir, I’ll speak to you before I interrogate anyone else.”
“Good, good. You’ve a future ahead of you, Constable. One filled with many struggles. Prove yourself up to the task.”
Cornwall clicked off.
Ely replayed that last sentence in his head. It seemed a strange way of concluding the conversation. Perhaps that was what the Councillor was like. Ely had never met him in person and up until the last few shifts, had rarely spoken to him. He looked down at the mangled remains of the ghost. Somehow that seemed a more fitting way of describing the unknown woman than ‘killer’.
It felt unreal, almost as if, now that it was over, it had all been too easy. The ghost’s face was nearly unrecognisable, yet Ely remembered how she had looked. And then he remembered how she had smiled. She had thought that she would get away.
But why had she gone into the lounge? He’d assumed that she had gone there to meet one of the other suspects. Perhaps she had, but she had access to the Tower’s surveillance system so surely she would have known he was in there. Why then did she go inside? Because he was in there, he realised. She hadn’t been going there to meet anyone else, and he hadn’t been chasing her. He had been following her.
He began to tap out a command, then stopped. He didn’t want it recorded. He began to walk briskly along the corridor to the Control Room.
“Ely! Congratulations,” Vauxhall began, “I was listening in to—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he interrupted, taking off his helmet. He checked that it had turned itself off.
“The screens here, can they be monitored?”
“By whom?”
“By anyone. Can we talk privately?” He looked around.
“I told you, there are no cameras down here.”
“Right.”
“Ely, what is it?” Vauxhall asked, the good cheer gone from her voice.
“There’s something wrong, something doesn’t add up. Can you bring up the schematics to the corridor outside Unit 6-4-17?” he asked.
“Okay, but tell me why?” she asked as she tapped out a command.
“Which one is the… okay, that’s the room the Greenes were murdered in, right?” Ely asked, pointing at the screen.
“Yes. Please, Ely, tell me what’s wrong.”
“Look, here.” He pointed. “There’s an access hatch right next to Unit 6-4-17, so the ghost didn’t need to avoid the cameras or wipe the footage when she killed the Greenes.”
“So? Why does that matter?”
“Well, it’s just… I… I don’t know.” The more he found out, the more he found the evidence didn’t fit the crime. “Why didn’t the system alert you when the woman walked into the lounge?” he asked, instead.
“I thought I’d explained,” she said. “The cameras record everything, but it’s the wristboards that tell us where people are. We track those, then search for the footage for that time and place.”
“So, because this ghost looks like everyone else you didn’t notice anything was wrong?”
“Well, yes. I mean, here.” She pointed. “This is the footage from the lounge right now. On this screen, that’s the wristboard log. Now, you look at those two and tell me if there’s someone who doesn’t belong?”
“But we track more than just their location,” Ely said. “What about weight and height and gait? What about the motion sensors in the Assemblies that make sure the workers are completing their tasks with the most efficient series of movements?”
“Yes, yes, we’ve got all that, and I can bring it up, but it’s all associated with the workers ID or, to put it another way, the wristboard.”
“But on the display on my helmet—” Ely began.
“No,” she cut in, “your helmet is different. You get the names and IDs and access to all the records. And you can have that because it’s just one screen and one camera. Imagine the computing power, and the requisite energy we’d need, if every camera in the Tower was going to overlay onto every screen here the data for every citizen. We couldn’t do it. You understand?”
“I think so, or I’m starting to.”
“You know something, or you suspect something, Ely, I can tell. What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Could the ghost be someone from one of the other Towers?”
“Well…” She paused to think. “No, I don’t think so.”
“You’re not certain?” he asked.
“No. I mean… okay, maybe. She’d have had to come in via the transport pad, and I watch each delivery and collection, but, I’m not watching each person come and go, so it’s possible. Why?”
He thought about telling her about Stirling, but he wasn’t certain they couldn’t be overheard.
“I’m just playing around with an idea. What happens when someone dies? Does their record get deleted then?”
“No, it’s just removed from the active database. It’s still there in the archive.”
“So if someone wanted to create a ghost, they would have to go in and actually destroy the entire digital record?”
“Right, exactly, the entire record,” she said. “For every meal eaten, every shower taken, every hour of Recreation, every time that the wristboard was used would have to be removed. And I don’t mean just deleted. That would just make it seem as if the food had disappeared or the electricity was being mysteriously generated by no one. No, you’d have to go through and edit every interaction that person had with the system. I’m not saying it’s impossible,” she added. “Just that it would take a very long time. I mean, it’s almost more believable that this woman was a ghost, you know, living outside the system.”
“What, the descendent of someone hiding down in the tunnels for the past sixty years?” Ely scoffed. “I hardly think so.”
“Yeah, but the tunnels are like the museum. No one goes there.”
“Because they’re flooded,” Ely said. “No, there’s someone else involved in this. Someone who has access to the system, someone who could go in and alter those records. Someone who has the time to do it.”
“What are you saying Ely?”
“That I want to get to the bottom of this. I want answers. They’re important.”
“The ghost’s dead. You’re going to be elected. What’s more important than that?”
“The truth,” he said. “Did those drones collect a sample of the woman’s clothing?”
“Just like you asked, yes.”
“Can you get it analysed?” he asked.
“Well, yes.”
“I mean right now.”
Chapter 8 - Interrogation
It took twenty minutes to find out who had printed the clothing. It took only thirty seconds to get approval from Councillor Cornwall to interrogate her.
“This way,” Ely said as he pushed Alexandra Penrith along the corridor.
“Why? Where are you taking me?”
Ely didn’t reply. She had been waiting for her ‘home’ when he’d stormed down the corridor and pulled her out of the queue. Heads had turned, cameras had begun to record, and a barrage of questions followed them as he marched her down to Level Three.