‘Two of whom were Halgarths,’ Christabel said. ‘The Merioneth team have moved up a level with this.’
‘This wasn’t a team,’ Paula said. She was looking down slope to the small waves washing ashore. ‘You only need one person to launch a missile like this. That gives minimum exposure to the rest of the organization. It’s also easier for one person to get out. Aidan, how far are we from Ridgeview by sea?’
He gestured at a distant headland. ‘About seven miles to the docks, there are some marinas closer, though.’
‘The terrain between here and the ring road is bad,’ Paula said. ‘Even if you were on a dirt bike it would take too long, and there’s too much that could go wrong. Fall off, puncture, whatever. Let’s pull up the satellite imagery and check for a boat.’
The helicopters took them back to the police situation van. Paula sent Nalcol on to Ridgeview. ‘If we find a boat, I want samples from it,’ she told him.
Christabel sat down in front of a spare desktop array as soon as they were back inside the van, and started to call up the satellite images. Paula stood at the back, watching her.
‘She’s good at this,’ she told Nelson as she pulled her hat off and dabbed at the sweat on her brow. Her hair was hanging limp against her brow and cheeks. Nelson handed her a cup of water from the cooler tower. They both sipped eagerly as Christabel began flicking through images, muttering instructions to the Directorate’s RI. ‘Thank you for shutting down the station,’ Paula said quietly.
‘The least we could do.’
‘I do require the suspect to stand trial. That means no unfortunate accidents. I will not permit that.’
Nelson was watching one of the screens showing two medics leaning over a bloody chunk of gore, inserting surgical tools. ‘The Sheldon Dynasty has every confidence in you, Paula. That’s official. But the perpetrators must be removed from society. The Dynasty will not have its members picked off in this fashion; ideologues must be made to understand that.’
‘It will happen. However, I will only be going after the team responsible for the actual attacks. Unless we discover complicity or a funding link with their political wing, the rest of the movement will remain untouched by the Directorate. They have a right to free speech no matter how unpleasant their views.’
‘I am aware of article one in the constitution, thank you; Nigel helped draft it. Leave the politicians to us.’
‘I still don’t understand the point of it,’ Paula said. ‘Merioneth is barely self-sufficient. They need continuing investment. They must know that.’
‘Ideologues aren’t rational people.’
‘A convenient label for us. But—’
‘Got a boat!’ Christabel shouted out. Everyone in the van craned for a look at her screens. The satellite image wasn’t good. It showed the coast next to the launch site, land and sea dividing the screen in half. A small clump of grey pixels formed a blob in the centre. ‘Time code checks,’ Christabel said. ‘This is fifteen minutes prior to the crash.’ The image changed as the satellite slid along its orbit, showing the coastline further to the east, there was little overlap; the boat was right on the edge of the screen.
‘We’re going to lose it,’ Nelson said. ‘This satellite is moving too quickly. It won’t be overhead after the launch. When’s the next pass?’
Christabel consulted a display. ‘There’s another satellite coming up in forty-two minutes. So we’ve got no coverage during the launch. I guess they worked that out, too.’
‘I don’t need to see them fire the missile,’ Paula said. ‘I just needed confirmation it was a boat. Aidan, get me access to every camera in every marina in Ridgeview. I want the image files from fifteen minutes before the launch to now. Find me a boat coming in. If they took a direct route it’ll be about twenty minutes after the attack. Christabel, start there.’
Aidan slipped into the seat next to Christabel, and used his police authorization to establish links into the city’s marinas.
‘How many trains left between then and now?’ Paula asked Nelson.
‘Seven.’
‘Get the station camera records ready for access.’
‘Way ahead of you,’ he grinned. ‘I’m pulling up passenger carriage camera files as well.’
It took Christabel another eight minutes to find a boat mooring at the Larsie marina. A man in a yellow shirt stepped off. ‘Here we go,’ she said with a trill of excitement as the camera observed him walk along the wooden quay used by Danney’s Boat Hire. She froze an image as he was just short of the camera, revealing the round face of a man in his late forties, with flesh starting to build up under his cheeks and round his chin. Dark skin, with stubble. Thinning grey-brown hair dangled out of his blue cap. His yellow shirt was open at the neck, revealing a dark necklace cord.
‘Nalcol, get over to the Larsie marina,’ Paula said. ‘We’ve found the boat. Captain, call up the hire company office, tell them it’s impounded. It must not be cleaned.’
‘You got it,’ Aidan said.
‘Nelson, transfer the station files to our RI, it’ll run visual recognition on that face. Christabel, get into the hire company’s records. Who paid for the boat?’
‘Yes, boss.’
The Directorate RI took ninety seconds to review every camera record from the station, running each face through a recognition program to identify the man on the marina.
‘There he is,’ Paula exclaimed contentedly as the largest screen in the situation van showed their suspect strolling down the main platform to a waiting train, still wearing his yellow shirt. The timeline was thirty-seven minutes after the attack. They watched the RI follow him through the cameras until he was sitting in a carriage on an express train heading for Earth. The train moved out of the station.
‘Let’s go,’ Paula said.
The three of them took Nelson’s helicopter back to the station. There was a train already waiting to leave, packed full of passengers angry at the delay. Paula, Christabel and Nelson hurried into the first class cabin and it left immediately, trundling along the track to the big wormhole generator half a mile beyond the marshalling yard. Once it was through, it made an unscheduled stop at a small service platform in EdenBurg’s vast terminal. They transferred over to an express heading for Earth.
Nalcol called as they reached the platform. ‘DNA match confirmed,’ he told Paula. ‘The man on the boat was the one who took a leak at the launch site.’
‘Send the file back to Paris,’ she told him. ‘Find his profile.’
‘He bought his train ticket with a one-time account,’ Nelson told them. ‘Untraceable. But we’ve followed him through LA galactic. He caught a trans-Earth loop, and got off at Sydney an hour ago. Caught a taxi.’
‘Leave that to us,’ Paula said. ‘The Directorate can track him.’
They sat back as the express accelerated out of EdenBurg. Five minutes later it was pulling in to LA Galactic.
‘Basker just called,’ Christabel said. ‘We’ve got a positive identification; visual corresponding to DNA. Dimitros Fiech. Address in Sydney. Works for Colliac Fak, a software development company. He’s a sales rep so he travels round a lot. Oh get this, Colliac’s Leisure Division supplies software to the travel industry, including the resort at Fire Plain.’
They left the express and started to run through the vast terminal to the platforms serving the trans-Earth loop. ‘Mine his background,’ Paula told Christabel, then put a call into the Directorate’s Sydney office. ‘I want a tactical team armoured up and ready when we arrive. Have a helicopter pick us up at the station.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ the duty officer replied. ‘The suspect’s taxi dropped him at the Wilkinson Tower off Penfold. We have two officers there now. As far as we know he’s still inside.’
‘Good work, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
‘I’d like to observe, please,’ Nelson said.
‘Yes,’ Paula said. ‘But that’s all.’
‘I know.’
