‘I’ll run back over your scan of the scene to see if there’s anything obvious. How the hell did that window break?’
Helix picked up Yawlander’s Glock 19 from the side table with his gloved right hand. He sniffed the muzzle and ejection port. ‘His weapon hasn’t been discharged.’
‘That BB gun isn’t going to touch that glass. You’d need an armour piercing round.’
‘I realise that. Anyway, even if he had got off a shot, the gun wouldn’t be back on the table.’
‘You’re going to be late for your audience.’
‘Shit!’ He pulled the door closed behind him, pressed his left thumb to the screen, punched in his override code and scanned his left retina. ‘OK. Door locked.’
‘There’s a lift waiting for you.’
‘I’m going to take the stairs. It’s only five floors.’ He located the door and pushed through into the bare concrete and steel stairwell. ‘Check the lift logs, Ethan. See how many requests there were to come up to his floor. Take a look at the cameras in all the stairwells to see if they picked anyone up.’
‘I’ll get Sofi on to it.’
‘Becoming your stock answer.’
‘That’s a bit harsh. Even I can’t out-think a neural network. Artificial Intelligence isn’t the future any more. It’s here, so you might as well suck it up.’
‘If you say so.’ Warm stale air laced with cement dust rose to meet him as he jogged down the stairs. ‘I need you on silent while I’m talking to her ladyship. If I need anything, I’ll use TC.’
3
Julia Ormandy’s office suite occupied the entire 50th floor. Her preference was for the ancient corridors of the Palace of Westminster. On the occasions she visited the Ministry of Home Defence building she was accompanied by a retinue of minions and security that required a three vehicle convoy to carry them.
A receptionist, with an auburn hairbun equal in size to her head, looked Helix up and down.
‘I’m Major—’
‘Yes,’ she said, her nose wrinkled as if she could smell something unpleasant on the end of it. She stepped from behind the raised desk. ‘Come.’
Helix followed, impressed that she could walk in the business suit she had sprayed on that morning. He checked his own reflection in the glass walls, brushing concrete dust from the sleeve of his smart-fabric jacket.
Two security guards flanked the double office door bearing Ormandy’s name and titles.
‘Stay,’ hairbun instructed, her finger pointing to the floor behind her as she slipped through a skinny opening in the door.
Grimacing at one of the guards, Helix muttered, ‘Maybe she’s gone to get a stick so we can play fetch.’
The guards remained impassive. They could have been Remotely Operated Synthetics or shrink-wraps as he and Ethan preferred to call them. Increasingly common in the security services, they were almost impossible to tell from human.
The door swung inwards. ‘Come,’ hairbun said, wagging her finger.
Helix ignored the temptation to bark and scamper into the dimly-lit office.
‘Thank you, Gemma,’ Julia Ormandy said from behind a wide desk and a wall of holographic displays. She dismissed the receptionist with a flick of the wrist.
Helix raised his eyebrows. So the copper-knob stick insect had a name.
‘Do come in, Major. I’d offer you coffee, but I imagine our meeting will be short.’
Helix came to a halt in the middle of the room. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’
The hum of the air-conditioning vents filled the silence. Ormandy drummed the three fingers of her left hand on the glass table-top, her head tilted, eyes – one blue, one green – fixed on him. ‘It’s a very—’ She looked back to the tabletop. ‘What is it now, Gemma?’
‘Sorry to disturb, Home Secretary,’ the receptionist said from the desk. ‘I have your daughter. She sounds upset.’
Ormandy sighed. ‘Put her through.’ Getting to her feet, she folded her arms.
Helix nodded towards the door. ‘I can—’
‘No. I won’t be long,’ Ormandy said as a miniature 3D rendition of her teenage daughter paced around the glass desktop, dressed in jeans and a black mesh crop top.
Helix looked around the office. He tilted his head towards an open door behind Ormandy. Was that a bedroom? A faint whiff of perfume drifted on the air. A mirrored interior door reflected a bathroom beyond.
Ormandy caught him looking. ‘What’s wrong, Christina?’ she said, pulling the door closed.
‘Did you tell Clyde that I couldn’t go to Tabitha’s coming-out party on Thursday?’ the kid spat.
Ormandy tilted her head back and closed her eyes. ‘No, and this could have waited. I’m busy.’
The petulant hologram glowered at Helix. ‘He’s an improvement on what you normally tie to your bed after a hard day at the orifice,’ she said, eyeing Helix.
‘Christ, she’s a live one!’ Ethan whispered into Helix’s implant.
‘What is it they used to say? Hashtag awkward.’
‘Christina, I told Clyde you had to be home by midnight, that’s all.’
‘Don’t give me the whole “school night” lecture, Mum,’ the kid said, making air-quotes with her fingers. ‘I mean, what is the point of education? There are fewer and fewer jobs thanks to Gaianomics.’ She stressed the syllables of the economic policy in a robotic tone.
Ormandy’s nostrils flared. ‘Mind your manners, young lady.’
‘Why’s that?’ Christina whispered. ‘Is she listening? Watching? Adjusting my medication or signing me up to an anger management workshop?’
‘It might do you good. Admitting you have a problem is a first step to solving it.’
Helix bit the inside of his lip, stifling a grin.
‘Tabitha’s parents have booked a private room at Rapture, we’re not getting there until ten,’ she said, pulling a grey hoody with a school logo over her head. ‘Staying for two hours? It’s hardly worth bothering.’
‘Don’t bother then,’ Ormandy said, her hands on her hips. ‘You have a field trip the next morning. It’ll be—’
‘The digger trip?’ Christina slapped her hand to her forehead. ‘So, it’s impossible for diggers to enter the city but OK for the city to send its “hope for the future” outside to watch a bunch of lowlifes scratching around in the
