"Did you bribe him?"

"Sure. I mean, something. I can't remember how much."

"Why not? I mean, that's how you got it in the first place, right? Why even bother?"

A long silence. AQD vehicle pa.s.ses are generally advertised as for businesses with a few more employees than Khurusch's sketchy concern, but it is not uncommon for small traders to help their applications with a few dollars-Besmarques being unlikely to move the Bes middlemen or issuing clerks at the Ul Qoman emba.s.sy.

"In case," he said hopelessly, "I ever needed help picking stuff up. My nephew's done the test, couple of mates, could've driven it, helped me out. You never know."

"Inspector?" Corwi was looking at me. She'd said it more than once, I realised. "Inspector?" She glanced at Khurusch, What are we doing? What are we doing?

"Sorry," I said to her. "Just thinking." I motioned her to follow me to the corner of the room, warning Khurusch with a pointed finger to stay put.

"I'm going to take him in," I said quietly, "but something's ... Look at him. I'm trying to work something out. Look, I want you to chase something up. As quick as you can, because tomorrow I'm going to have to go to this d.a.m.n orientation, so I think tonight's going to be a long night. Are you okay with that? What I want is a list of all the vans reported stolen in Besel that night, and I want to know what happened in each case."

"All of them ...?" of them ...?"

"Don't panic. It'll be a lot for all vehicles, but factor out everything but vans round about this size, and it's only for one night. Bring me everything you can on each of them. Including all paperwork a.s.sociated, okay? Quick as possible."

"What are you going to do?"

"See if I can make this sleazy sod tell the truth."

COEWI, through cajoling, persuasion and computer expertise, got hold of the information within a few hours. To be able to do that, so quickly, to speed up official channels, is voodoo.

For the first couple of hours as she went through things, I sat with Khurusch in a cell, and asked him in various ways and in several different formulations Who took your van? Who took your van? and and Who took your pa.s.s? Who took your pa.s.s? He whined and demanded his lawyer, which I told him he would have soon. Twice he tried getting angry, but mostly he just repeated that he did not know, and that he had not reported the thefts, of van and papers, because he had been afraid of the trouble he would bring on himself. "Especially because they already warned me on that, you know?" He whined and demanded his lawyer, which I told him he would have soon. Twice he tried getting angry, but mostly he just repeated that he did not know, and that he had not reported the thefts, of van and papers, because he had been afraid of the trouble he would bring on himself. "Especially because they already warned me on that, you know?"

It was after the end of the working day when Corwi and I sat together in my office to work through it. It would be, as I warned her again, a long night.

"What's Khurusch being held for?"

"At this stage Inappropriate Pa.s.s Storage and Failure to Report Crime. Depending on what we find tonight I might add Conspiracy to Murder, but I have a feeling-"

"You don't think he's in on whatever, do you?"

"He's hardly a criminal genius, is he?"

"I'm not suggesting he planned anything, boss. Maybe even that he knew about anything. Specific. But you don't think he knew who took his van? Or that they were going to do something?"

I wagged my head. "You didn't see him." I pulled the tape of his interrogations out of my pocket. "Take a listen if we have a bit of time."

She drove my computer, pulling the information she had into various spreadsheets. She translated my muttered, vague ideas into charts. "This is called data mining." data mining." She said the last words in English. She said the last words in English.

"Which of us is the canary?" I said. She did not answer. She only typed and drank thick coffee, "made f.u.c.king properly," and muttered complaints about my software.

"So this is what we have." It was past two. I kept looking out of my office window at the Besel night. Corwi smoothed out the papers she had printed. Beyond the window were the faint hoots and quietened mutter of late traffic. I moved in my chair, needing a p.i.s.s from caffeinated soda.

"Total number of vans reported stolen that night, thirteen." She scanned through with her fingertip. "Of which three then turn up burnt out or vandalised in some form or other."

"Joyriders."

"Joyriders, yes. So ten."

"How long before they were reported?"

"All but three, including the charmer in the cells, reported by the end of the following day."

"Okay. Now where's the one where you have ... How many of these vans have Ul Qoma pa.s.s papers?"

She sifted. "Three."

"That sounds high-three out of thirteen?"

"There are going to be way more for vans than for vehicles as a whole, because of all the import-export stuff."

"Still though. What are the statistics for the cities as a whole?"

"What, of vans with pa.s.ses? I can't find it," she said after a while of typing and staring at the screen. "I'm sure there must be a way to find out, but I can't figure out a way to do it."

"Okay, if we have time we'll chase that. But I'm betting it's less than three out of thirteen."

"You could ... It does sound high."

"Alright, try this. Of those three with pa.s.ses that got stolen, how many owners have previous warnings for condition-transgressions?"

She looked through papers and then at me. "All three of them. s.h.i.t. All three for inappropriate storage. s.h.i.t." s.h.i.t."

"Right. That does sound unlikely, right? Statistically. What happened to the other two?"

"They were ... Hold on. Belonged to Gorje Feder and Salya Ann Mahmud. Vans turned up the next morning. Dumped."

"Anything taken?"

"Smashed up a bit, a few tapes, bit of change from Feder's, an iPod from Mahmud's."

"Let me look at the times-there's no way of proving which of these were stolen first, is there? Do we know if these other two still have their pa.s.ses?"

"Never came up, but we could find out tomorrow."

"Do if you can. But I'm going to bet they do. Where were the vans taken from?"

"Juslavsja, Brov Prosz, and Khurusch's from Mashlin."

"Where were they found?"

"Feder's in ... Brov Prosz. Jesus. Mahmud's in Mashlin. s.h.i.t. Just off ProspekStrasz."

"That's about four streets from Khurusch's office."

"s.h.i.t." She sat back. "Talk this out, boss."

"Of the three vans that get stolen that night that have visas, all have records for failing to take their paperwork out of their glove compartments."

"The thief knew?" knew?"

"Someone 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 Besel. "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 here, to near where Mahmud parks hers. They jack it, fast, but Ms. Mahmud keeps her pa.s.s in the office now too, so after having made it look like a robbery, they dump it near the next next in the list and move on." 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 f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.k 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 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. f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.k's going on." The two of us, boss? Neither of us knows what the f.u.c.k'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. 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 Besel Old Town into the convolutes of Copula Hall's outskirts, and down at last into its traffic quadrant. Past and under the stretches of facade where caryatids looked at least somewhat like figures from Bes history, towards where they were Ul Qoman, into the hall itself, where a wide road overlit by windows and grey lights was sided at the Bes end by a long line of pedestrians seeking day entry. In the distance beyond the red taillights we were faced by the tinted headlights of Ul Qoman cars, more gold than ours.

"Been to Ul Qoma before, sir?"

"Not for a long time."

When the border gates came into view Dyegesztan spoke to me again. "Did they have it like this before?" He was young.

"More or less."

A policzai policzai car, we were in the official lane, behind dark imported Mercedeses that probably carried politicians or businesspeople on fact-finding missions. A way off was the engine-grumbling line of quotidian travellers in cheaper cars, spivs and visitors. car, we were in the official lane, behind dark imported Mercedeses that probably carried politicians or businesspeople on fact-finding missions. A way off was the engine-grumbling line of quotidian travellers in cheaper cars, spivs and visitors.

"Inspector Tyador Borlu." The guard looked at my papers.

"That's right."

He went carefully over everything written. Had I been a tourist or trader wanting a day-pa.s.s, pa.s.sage might well have been quicker and questioning more cursory. As an official visitor, there was no such laxity. One of those everyday bureaucratic ironies.

"Both of you?"