The Iron Swamp (30 page)

She kept her hand on mine, gripping slightly harder. "We haven't been together all that long, but already you feel like a sort of brother to me."

I nodded as if she could never have said anything else. "At least you didn't say father."

Her matte lips widened into the old predatory grin. "Well, an older brother."

I laughed despite myself. "Obviously."

After a moment where there was nowhere to look but at each other, she said, "You owe me breakfast."

Grateful for the distraction, I caught the barman's eye, and he wandered over. "Can I have another full breakfast please and a pint of..."

"Red rum please."

The barman winked at me again, and I grinned uneasily, pretending I didn't understand the implication. "Shall we get a table?"

She nodded, and we weaved our way through the holotables and screens until we found a free one we could sit at where we couldn't be overheard.

Becky drank deep into the red rum as the barman placed it on the table. "Come on, tell me who did it then."

"Laurie Colson." The little disfigured girl who looked outwardly no more competent than Hobb. I had made a mistake there. The face was malformed, but the brain behind it was strong, dangerous even.

Becky's piercing bristled in her nose. "Laurie wouldn't hurt a fly!"

I looked to make sure the bartender was out of earshot. "Her motives are unclear." I knew the two of them were friendly, if not friends.

"I thought she couldn't be the killer because she wasn't there the day Kenrey was killed. There was no way for her to get onto the premises."

"That was what I thought, but when Julia Wenling said she saw Colson at the compound after Hobb's suicide, I went over the security footage again. I knew after Colson didn't appear at the front gate that one of them was up to something. "It was when I watched Hobb take the bins outside straight from Kenrey's room that I realized the killer could get out of the compound via the bins."

Becky gulped enough red rum to make me hope there wasn't any rum in it. "So it was that simple?"

"There was still one major problem. Colson must have got out via the bins, but she couldn't have got in that way because she was seen on the security footage walking in and out of the front entrance after Hobb brought the bins in for the final time before the murder. When Hobb committed suicide, the security camera at the bin gate was turned off, so she could have got in unseen then, but that didn't apply on the day of Kenrey's death."

The barman brought over two breakfasts containing more meat than a kraaken's tentacle, and we dug in. The mixture of grease and protein was impossible to break away from, so not wanting to leave the story until I finished, I continued to talk with a mouth full of food. "That almost convinced me I was looking at the wrong person, except for when I remembered her DNA was found at the crime scene."

Becky scraped a chili sausage off her fork with her teeth. "So? I thought everyone's DNA was at the crime scene."

"Except that Dollews said that the DNA samples had to have got there over the last two days. Everyone else was in work during those two days, but Colson wasn't."

"Yes she was. I told you she came in for a bit the day before the murder despite the fact that she was sick."

"But during the time she was in, she never went anywhere near Kenrey's quarters. I have no doubt she intended to, but Mrs. Jason forced her to leave again, as you said."

Becky interrupted me. "Perhaps she transferred a hair or a skin cell or something to someone else, or a bit of her DNA blew in from outside."

I shrugged. "It's possible, but I spoke to the new guy in charge of the science division early this morning and he says that any DNA coming from outside would be more decayed. The chance of someone else carrying it in and then dropping it while in the room are hundreds of thousands to one, maybe more. For me, that was proof enough. It was her. I just didn't know how she did it."

Becky was eating faster than me despite my hunger. "Maybe that's enough to convince you, but not me."

There was no point in pushing it, so I left the issue alone. Some people didn't trust things they couldn't see. Juries, judges, and policemen all believed with their eyes. DNA alone, even when it offered conclusive proof, was not enough. To them DNA evidence was little more than a witness statement from a scientist with the same fallibility.

Becky would never believe me because she had no reason to. I had never told her about the girls Kenrey raped, not even my suspicions about Liegon and Benrick. But now I was finally certain that she wasn't the killer, she had a right to know the full story.

It would be safer for her not to know. Reens had instructed me to tell no one, and I had already let it slip once. The punishment for breaking the official secrets act a second time would be severe. It was selfish to tell her, but if I continued to keep the same secrets then nothing would change, and she would leave again. I could not return to being alone.

I smiled sadly at her, relieving myself of one burden to replace it with another. "I'm going to tell you something about the case that you don't know, but you can't tell anyone, or both our lives will be in danger." I told her about Philip Rake and the pimp he killed, Kathryn, and the other girls Kenrey had raped. Everything.

When I finished, Becky was no longer eating. "That sick frak."

I nodded. "It was Kenrey's paranoia that got him killed. He didn't want anyone to know that he was having sex with underage girls, so he had them wrap up in so many layers and hoods that they were unidentifiable as humans. If any of the guards stole the security footage and showed it to the police or the press, they would be laughed out of the building."

"I thought whoever did it came through the window?"

I shook my head. "I was wrong. If the member of staff was present on the day, they could have got in that way, but Colson would never have made it past the front gate. She had to find another way in, and her method of entry took her straight past the guards."

"With this hooker girl?" Becky sounded skeptical.

"They must have practiced at it for months to get the walk right, with Kathryn walking on top of Laurie's feet. It's not easy, and your knees stick out like you're marching, but it's barely noticeable under the robes, especially to a bunch of disinterested guards who think they're looking at a blind girl in high heels. The only difference is the height. Colson is taller than Kathryn, so I called Lesgech and got him to send me all the footage of Kathryn from previous occasions. He was hesitant, but lately I've found I'm a hard man to say no to."

"And?"

"On the day of Kenrey's death, Kathryn was over a hands breadth taller than normal. Some of that might be explained by the amount of layers she was wearing, but not all of it."

"But it could be explained by footwear," added Becky. "You said they sometimes wore heels to make them look taller, which might also explain her funny walk."

I shook my head. "I thought the same thing, but the photos of the scene show she wasn't wearing heels that day."

"I still find it difficult to believe Laurie Colson is a murderer. There is no way she could lift Kenrey onto that chair even if she had help."

I smiled. "For a while the chair vexed me as well, but I know how they did it now. Signey told us that Kenrey's belly had pooled blood where someone had been pushing against it. Kathryn must have got beneath Kenrey and pushed up with her legs while Colson pulled him onto the chair." I was right the whole time. Like the hole in the wall and Peti's blood, the dead man's chair was just another deception. Colson was a meticulous planner, and every aspect of Kenrey's death had been thought about.

Becky was no longer listening. Her breakfast gone, she followed the zigzag patterns on the table screen with her knife.

"What is it, Becky?"

"I'm not sure I want to catch the person who killed a rapist pedophile. You read all those comics about vigilante heroes more than anyone. Doesn't this sound like the sort of person we should be helping?"

My mother bought me my first superhero comic when I was nine, not long after I received my first booklet. Before that I was trusted only with paper books intended to be dropped and destroyed by children too young to handle electronics. It felt so adult to be given a booklet that even the most muddled garbage seemed like skilled storytelling. Sergeant Kearo, the soldier who always bested his foes with strength, wit, honesty, and decency was the hero of my youth. When I was eleven I even wanted to join the army. But in reality, Sergeant Kaero would be stripped of his rank the first time he disobeyed the orders of the incompetent General. Such people could not exist in The Iron Swamp.

I offered Becky the explanation I knew she would not accept. "In The Kaerosh, rapists are more likely to be killed by rapists than their victims. We don't know Colson's motives for doing what she did, and it isn't our job to ask–"

"But if we don't ask then who will?" She pushed her plate away. "Not Hayson or Clazran. Cythuria! They already tried to convict two innocent people. They sure as anything aren't going to care about the motives of the guilty one."

I was starting to feel a bit full, and finally swallowed the contents of my mouth without replacing it. "I don't need to ask because it's as plain as the deformations on her face. Revenge. It's always the same. And revenge consumes the afflicter as much as the afflicted. She helps no one, and we help no one by allowing her to continue."

"It helped the child that would have been raped."

I nodded to placate her anger. "In some small way, yes, but Kathryn is still a slave imprisoned by people beyond reproach. She will be raped again and again until she is too old and too broken to continue."

"Then those are the people we should be fighting. Laurie wasn't a bad person. I think she wants to help."

I didn't say Colson couldn't be trusted. Becky was so like my mother that I could have been having the exact same conversation with her. Perhaps I hired her for that reason. Although I was not willing to sacrifice myself in the fight against the state as my mother was, neither did I want to become an agent of the system. I needed someone to argue the counterpoint. "We can't fight them, Becky, we would be destroyed. I want The Kaerosh to change as much as you, but that sort of thing takes generations and isn't affected by little people like you and me. To do the maximum good we must aim smaller and survive longer."

Becky shook her head. "That's cowardice."

"To do otherwise around men like Clazran is suicide. Colson is smart, but she's young, and I have already caught her. She won't live out the cycle even if I do nothing, while Kenrey will be replaced by someone a little better or a little worse, but basically the same for cycle upon time. People like Colson don't do Cos any good; they just make it more violent."

Was Liegon better than Kenrey? It was unlikely she raped children, but the protest and the debates that had filled every news site since suggested that, on a macroscopic scale, she was much worse. The Felycian church had sparked one Carasaki Rebellion, and Liegon's rise to power was a portent of history repeating itself. It was possible that Kenrey was the only obstacle standing in her way, and Colson was her agent to remove it. Becky did not want to hear it, but that would make the little deformed girl no better than a common assassin.

"You're rationalizing," Becky said. "Laurie won't get a fair trial. No one will ever be told Kenrey was a child rapist. All they will see is a deformed girl who killed a bishon."

"I know, just as she did when she slit Kenrey's throat. That isn't our responsibility."

"Then who will take responsibility?"

I sighed. "If I don't solve this case then I won't last long. I've made too many enemies. I never asked for this case, but I'm now in a situation where I have to solve it."

Becky looked away, her hair swinging to conceal a burgundy frown.

"And there is another thing," I continued. "Clazran promised that if I solve the case he will release an innocent woman from prison. My last case, the one that put me in the basement, was a woman who got framed for a crime she didn't commit. I told Clazran he could count on my loyalty if he got her acquitted. Stupid thing to do, but if I solve it, he may let her out."

Becky's carefree face was transformed into something older and infinitely more serious. She whirled the red rum in her glass and refused to meet my eyes. "Boss, you've been good to me. You got me out of that place, and despite the lies and mistrust, I think you're a pretty good person. So if you
need
to catch Laurie then that's fine. I'll help you, but let's not pretend that we are the good guys."

I opened my mouth to protest but thought better of it. I didn't see myself that way at all. I was a policeman catching a murderer, but perhaps that was delusion. Perhaps it was the good people who threw their lives away pointlessly trying to prevent things that couldn't be stopped. That would explain why everywhere was such dis. But I didn't believe that. They were fools, good certainly, but that wasn't the only kind of good. I fought the system where I could and when I had to, but not for assassins and vigilantes who were little better than their victims.

"So what's the plan?" she asked.

"Catch Colson."

We finished our meals and the barman refused to accept payment for them. I transferred ten cosians to his tablet as a tip and we left. "Unfortunately," I continued, "she doesn't exist. Outside the compound, there is no record of a Laurie Colson of the same age and profile anywhere."

Becky followed me out the door donning her scarf over her mouth to protect herself from the icy wind. "So what do we do?"

I called for my slider and stood waiting for it to arrive. "You don't have her contact details do you?"

"Sorry."

I shrugged. I couldn't know whether she was being honest, but I was not about to push it. "We have two possibilities: Either Colson was paid by Vera Liegon to commit the murder or she wasn't. If she was then our best hope is that Colson is an assassin with a criminal record."