Paula reluctantly dug a wide-brimmed hat from her little bag. The door opened, and she immediately held her breath as oppressively hot air swept in.
‘Hellfire,’ Christabel groaned. ‘Literally.’
They climbed out. Paula put on a pair of sunglasses which opaqued up to their highest level. Then she took her jacket off, feeling sweat prickle her bare arms. The arid desert air was burning its way down her throat, drying her sinuses.
‘Wouldn’t do that if I was you,’ a man told them. He was dressed in a loose Arabic-style robe with a deep white hood. ‘Detective Captain Aidan Winkal,’ he said as he offered his hand.
‘Paula Myo.’
‘I’ve heard of you, Investigator. But seriously, if you haven’t put on screening membrane, five minutes exposure in this sunlight will burn your skin down to the bone.’
‘Okay.’ She put the jacket back on.
‘Come on, I’ve got our mobile situation office set up.’
It was a big old van with the Ridgeview police logo emblazoned on the side. Five tall heat-dump fins sprouted out of the roof, glowing a faint rose-pink. Inside, the air was thankfully cool. A bench table down one side was cluttered with various desktop arrays operated by Winkal’s colleagues. Screens and small holographic portals relayed various images from the helicopters and jeeps covering the site.
‘What procedures are you following?’ Paula asked.
Aidan Winkal had pulled his hood back to reveal a weathered face with silver-fox hair cut short. He appeared hesitant. ‘Look, we’re not exactly used to this kind of thing, you know.’
‘We’re not here to criticize,’ Paula assured him. ‘We both want the same thing, to catch the people responsible. The Directorate will assume responsibility for tracking down the group which did this. But site control and recovery is all yours. Now tell me what you’re doing, and we’ll be happy to provide advice.’
‘Okay, thanks. We’re trying to map the debris area. The larger sections of fuselage are easy enough to find, and so far we’ve picked up thirty-seven personal emergency beacons. My squads are escorting medical teams out to them. The bodies we’ve located so far… they’re not intact, you know.’
‘I understand. However, their memorycells should be able to survive the impact. They’re designed to withstand a lot worse than this.’
‘Sure.’
‘We have a Directorate forensics team en route. Some of their sensor systems will be able to help your search. I’ll assign them as soon as we’ve identified and recovered the missile. Have you located the launch site yet?’
‘No. I’m concentrating on the crash, finding those poor people. We’re still trying to build a full passenger list.’
‘Fair enough. Christabel and I will work out where it was fired from. I’ll need complete access to the plane’s memory. Have you found it yet?’
‘Yes. It never lost contact with the unisphere. We know where it is but we haven’t actually collected it yet. I encrypted the channel and restricted access.’
‘Good. I’d also like to see the CST station closed to both inbound and outbound trains. We can do without the reporters who are undoubtedly on their way. Secondly, there’s a chance the team which fired the missile is still on the planet. If so, I’d like them confined here.’
‘I, er, don’t really have that authority. I don’t even think our Prime Minister does.’
‘I’ll contact my chief right away. But you’ll need to post some officers at the station. It might turn ugly once the trains stop running.’
‘Okay.’
Paula and Christabel claimed a couple of fold-out chairs at the rear of the van, and got Aidan to open the restricted channel to the plane’s memory. Using the radar data to backtrack the missile’s trajectory was easy enough; it had come from a point approximately quarter of a mile from the coast, five miles outside Ridgeview.
‘Wouldn’t take long to get to the city ring road from there,’ Christabel exclaimed as she reviewed a local map in her virtual vision.
‘Pull Ridgeview’s traffic management records,’ Paula told her. ‘Find out what vehicles if any joined the road from outside this morning. I’ll also want the air traffic records scrutinizing. They might have flown out.’
‘Right away.’
‘What kind of orbital surveillance have you got here?’ Paula asked Aidan.
‘Eight low-orbit satellites for geophysical observation,’ he told her. ‘The resolution isn’t good. You could see the Siddley-Lockheed, and most houses; but a car would be hard to make out, and individual people are too small.’
‘Okay. We’ll see what kind of images the Directorate RI can pull out of the raw data. Right now, we need to get out to the launch site. This sun is degrading our evidence by the minute. Can you give me a helicopter, please?’
The Directorate forensics team arrived in time to join them on the helicopter. Aidan Winkal also elected to come with them. As the coast slipped into view through the cabin window he shook his head in bemusement. ‘I just got word from the station,’ he called above the rotor noise. ‘CST has suspended the train service to EdenBurg. Your Directorate has a lot of clout.’
‘Three of the holiday party were Sheldon Dynasty members,’ Paula said. ‘That’ll speed things up a little.’
Aidan nodded in understanding.
Christabel leaned in close to Paula. ‘I give it ten minutes before
Paula gazed down at the coastline. ‘You think it will be that long?’
‘I’ve already had two calls from the Halgarth security office. Any assistance we need…’
They circled the zone Paula had identified, seeing nothing but shingle and rock. A scan from the helicopter’s radar didn’t add anything. Paula’s optical inserts were giving her an infra-red picture. Every surface was radiant with heat as it basked in the fierce sunlight. ‘Anything?’ she asked Nalcol, the forensics officer who was with them. He was sitting next to the open side door, aiming a specialist array at the ground.
‘A spectral of an unusual airborne carbon residual. Could be the launch booster. Don’t know for sure. But we’ll need to land clear. I don’t want the downwash to screw up evidence.’
The pilot put them down three hundred yards away.
Paula, Christabel, and Aidan followed Nalcol and his assistant towards the area where the carbon residue had spread. The forensics people were sweeping their arrays at everything as they went. A little pack of bots crawled along beside them, like foot-long caterpillars with thin antenna strands stroking the ground as they went.
‘No sign of any vehicle tracks,’ Christabel said.
‘Tough to see on this terrain,’ Paula said. Her toe nudged some of the flat shingle. ‘If Nalcol confirms this as the launch point, we’ll seal it off and bring in the rest of the team.’
‘This is going to be a tough one,’ Christabel said, shielding her eyes as she scanned the grey-blue sea. The land sloped down towards it like a giant beach. ‘They didn’t leave much for us.’
‘Actually, this isolation helps us a great deal,’ Paula said. ‘When we get back to Paris I want you to put together a team to track down who knew the Dynasty members had booked their holiday here. Get a profile on everyone from the Fire Plain resort staff through the tour company they use, and most importantly the entourage. I want to know if any of them have left recently. Then there’s the girlfriends, one-night stands, other friends — their families, connections. It’ll be a big list, but finite. Cross-reference for any connection to Merioneth.’
Christabel let out a soft whistle. ‘I’ll assign Basker to lead it. He’s good at data analysis.’
