The Spook and the Spirit in the Stone Read online

  "Polite gossip has the family labelled as mystics and ugly rumour would have you believe that they're witches." I know of the Treebones, who practice clairvoyance and psychometry of the real and scary kind. The department uses them from time to time. "They're just a tribe of lovable eccentrics."

  "Real talent flourishes in the strangest places," Giselle shrugs. "Move on. Sophie isn't here."

  We draw another blank in Copperdrift, climbing up through stands of pine between the fenced estates until we reach the cataract at the canyon's head. The air's cooler here, filled with a mist of water vapour from the falls and I'm sorry when Afton makes a U-turn to take us back down to the plains.

  Goldangel Canyon is much steeper, a place of hanging cliffs and barren precipices. The road hugs the northern lip of the ravine, zig-zagging up the fiercest slopes. Afton steers us confidently through the hair-pins, past timber-clad ranches and white-washed haciendas screened from us by bushes of some native variety, with orange flowers and wicked thorns. At the summit, where a cairn marks the highest point of the hills, we stop with the whole of the city spread out before us, a flickering mirage under heat-haze. "Anything?"

  "Nothing at all," Giselle sighs, lifting the heavy plait and fanning air over the nape of her neck to cool it. “It would be easier for us to find the child if I'd ever met her, as known minds are much simpler to locate in mass populations. She may be drugged, asleep or in a trance-state, in which case we’ve no hope of tracking her thoughts."

  I wonder exactly who she's referring to in the plural. I don't think I'm included, nor Afton. "What do we do now? Give up? “

  "Or call in one of your home-grown psychics?" the telepath smiles ruefully. "They might be more use on this case than I've been. Let's go back to the station and find another way to work at this problem."

  We sweep down the hillside, riding the outside of the curves. Over the edge of the cliff, far down in the base of the canyon, I can see the glitter of the stream that carved it, then my view is obscured by a cloud of dust thrown up by the tyres.

  "What in hell!" Afton spins the wheel away from the sheer drop to our left, yet the car bucks towards it. There's a sound like a muted handclap in the rear seat and Giselle is gone. Kicked by confusion and fear, my senses snap into slow motion, so I know we're in deep shit. No time to think or make elaborate plans – despite all Afton's efforts to hold it on the road, this car is determined to take a nosedive over the cliff. Settling for brute force and ignorance, I launch myself towards the driver's door. Afton's smart enough to hit the catch, I scoop her up in passing and we fall out of the car just as its front wheels tip over into thin air. I twist around Afton, taking most of the impact as we hit the tarmac. Nothing breaks, but I'll be counting bruises for a week. I'm winded, so I lie there, looking up into a cloudless sky and listening to the death-throes of our car, as it crashes into the abyss. One of the hits fractures its gas-tanks, and it explodes in a pillar of yellow flame.

  "Stay down!" Afton warns. "Or that bastard who shot out our tyre might try for a live target."

  There's a streak of blood on her forehead and I reach up to wipe it away. No cut underneath, so it must be mine. "Are you okay?"

  "Me? I soft-landed on you. I'm amazed you didn't yell when both of my knees hit your groin." She rolls to one side, shifting her weight from my chest. "Sure hope I didn't break any of your bones... "

  "My skeleton's built to take more punishment than that."

  "What a hero!" For a moment I think she's being sarcastic, then she pats my cheek and grins at me. There's warmth in her eyes, a mixture of gratitude and relief, and I catch a glimpse of the attractive woman she might have been if life had been kinder to her. "It would have been a stupid way to die, plastered across some damn cliff side! Thanks, Jerome, for letting them put my obituary back on hold."

  "My pleasure, partner." I see that's the truth, but can't recall exactly when we crossed the line from wariness to rapport. 'Cenzo must have known that his two broken pieces would fit perfectly together, the cunning bastard!

  Afton shakes herself, all business again. "Where's Giselle? Did you see what became of our spook?"

  "Don't worry, she wasn't in the car when it went over. She left –" I try to distill some sense from the limited data of a quiet implosion and an inexplicable disappearance. "I guess she must have teleported out."

  Afton groans. "After six or seven vodkas I might be persuaded that telepathy exists, but anything more arcane than that is a definite no-no."

  I don't have the breath to argue. Struggling to my knees, as graceless as any newborn colt, I crawl to the lip of the ravine. The car’s still burning, sending up a plume of oily smoke.

  Behind me, Afton curses quietly. "My phone's trashed. I can't call for help."

  "Bet they saw that blast clear across town at the station. The fire-crew are probably already in transit." I squint across the canyon, seeing nothing through the grey-green fug. "Is that where the shell came from?"

  "Must have been, to hit the front near-side wheel." Afton joins me, also staying on all-fours. "Is there a road on the south side of the canyon?"

  "Only a track, barely fit for a horse or a mule." I can hear sirens at the foot of the hill, help on its way. "No houses on that side either, only a few cabins kept by part-time pioneers. Weekends in the wilderness, with all the comforts of the city just a twenty-five minute stroll away."

  "We should check them out," Afton decides. “Can you ride a horse?"

  "Sorry, no. They don't like me. I think they can smell the inner snake."

  The ambulance reaches us then, with the fire tender close on its tail. Getting out of the car was a snip compared with escaping the clutches of the paramedics. They clean us up, put five stitches in the cut on my forehead in spite of all my protests that it's only a scratch, and shoot both of us so full of anti-shock drugs that we could walk clear-eyed through Armageddon, then they drop us back at the station.

  News travels like wildfire in our line of work and the tale of our miraculous survival breaks all records. Most of our colleagues contrive to be there when we return, waving from windows on the upper floors, nodding and smiling around office doors. Ruthie beams at us as we pass the desk, wiping tears from the corner of her eye.

  "I'd no idea we were so popular," Afton mutters, so quietly that only I hear it.

  Captain Vincenzo greets us in the corridor, an unprecedented honour. "Good to see both of you still on your feet, detectives. Giselle brought back your shooter fifteen minutes ago. I've had to use every last gram of my authority to prevent her starting the interrogation without you. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that this may be our only hope of finding the child alive. Don't blow it."

  "We'll give it our best," Afton replies, for both of us.

  On our way down to the interview rooms, we pass Beka McGee. She steps into my path, blessing me with that brilliant sun-splash grin of hers. "I'm glad you're still in one piece, big guy!"

  "I didn't know you cared."

  "Blame it on laziness!" She winks at me, before moving on. "If you'd hit bottom in that canyon, who'd have gotten the job of fitting the gory jigsaw back together? Yours truly, that's who – and you don't know how happy it makes me to find that my talents aren't required!"

  Afton watches me out of the corner of her eye until Beka is well out of earshot. "How do you do that to women?"

  "Do what?"

  "Provoke such instant adoration. That's the second victim I've seen struck down by it in as many days."

  "Must be my stunning good looks, my sculpted, muscular form or my gentle, sensitive nature... "

  She laughs along with me. "If you want the truth of it, it's none of the above. It's just that you're a nice man."

  "Nice? Isn't that an insult?" I frown at her in mock-anger. “Call me mean or moody, call me an unreasonable bastard, call me every lousy name under the sun but, please, don't ever call me 'nice', okay?"

  "Okay," she says, serious on the surface. "Oh my, you
're just so scary when you get mad, Jerome, as fierce as a big, old, cuddly pussycat!"

  Giselle is waiting for us outside Interview Room Five, under the watchful glare of two uniformed officers and Lacey, another player on the Homicide team. I guess 'Cenzo didn't trust her to stay out unattended. Her mood dips three shades blacker as her empathy picks up our lighthearted banter. "Well, it's about time –"

  Afton grabs the spook by her shoulders and slams her against the wall. My partner's instant, white-hot fury is terrifying – it even catches the telepath unawares. "You left us to die in that car, you bitch! You ran out to save your own pretty skin, never mind that two worthless native fools might crash and burn!"

  Something changes inside Giselle's head, a switch knocked from off to on by an alien flux of energy. In that instant I'm aware she's more dangerous than anything human has a right to be, and I'm afraid she'll kill Afton for daring to lay hands on her person. Before I can react, her predatory rage winks out again and she relaxes in the stronger woman's grip. "I had a fix on where the shot had come from. I jumped straight there to catch our would-be assassin!"

  "And if we'd died?"

  The spook shrugs, her lovely face a mask of ice. "Then you'd be dead, but we'd still have the means to find Sophie Crispianou. When push comes to shove, my loyalties lie with Earth."

  "And you'd sacrifice us on the altar of your mission?" Afton releases the pale woman, shaking her head. "Don't answer that – I don't need to hear the words. Of course you would, and with your masters' blessing. All that matters is the safe recovery of the President's niece, isn't that so?"

  "That is my primary goal, yes."

  "You sound like a machine," I say, edging between them.

  Real hatred sparks in her eyes, a brief flash of it followed by a fraction of a second of heart-deep pain. "We're wasting time. We should be questioning my prisoner."

  Afton peers through the inspection window into the room, then steps aside to let me take a look. A woman sits at the table toying with a plastic cup of grey tea. I can't imagine anyone who looks less capable of attempted murder. The kindest thing you can say about her is that she's ordinary, with a thin, anxious face, wispy brown hair and a wardrobe that favours beige, khaki and taupe. I can't see them, but I'll bet she wears flat, sensible shoes and has never been known to run out of milk or toilet roll. "Who is she?"

  "She wouldn't give us a name," Lacey says. "Climbed up on her high horse and invoked the holy name of civil liberty. We're running a data-search using her image and fingerprints. If she lives in the city, it shouldn't take more than twenty minutes."

  "We'll wait," Afton decides. "Right now, I'd kill for a cup of strong black coffee. Shall we risk the canteen?"

  "You've got guts, Afton, if you're ready to walk that close to death twice in one day!"

  She laughs at that, already moving down the corridor. "And Lacey, keep that woman away from the prisoner. If she tries to get in there while we're gone, you have my permission to break both of her legs."

  Lacey grins at the idea. "Yes, ma’am!"

  "Damn you, Lamont!" Giselle snaps. "You don't have the authority to do that!"

  "In my book, she does." Lacey has a rep for being stubborn and inflexible, and that's a bonus now.

  Afton shrugs. “Captain Vincenzo has already given the order. All I'm doing is reinforcing it."

  "Come with us," I try to keep some semblance of the peace. "I'll buy you coffee and cake – and you won't get a sweeter offer than that all week!"

  She's still too angry to back down. I sense the flash and sizzle of fury in her, as bright and vicious as an electrical arc. She refuses with a shake of her head, her silver-blonde plait lashing like a rattler's tail.

  I follow Afton along to the station's canteen, which lives on the ground floor at the rear of the building. It has a great view over the park, the most uncomfortable slime-green chairs known to humankind and a menu that tries much too hard to be adventurous within the confines of an institutional budget. The unpredictable nature of the quality of meals here is legendary, swinging from downright inedible to absolutely excellent. Rumour has it that it all hangs on a complex algorithm involving prevailing wind direction, current sun-spot activity and whether the city's basketball team, the Pioneers, win or lose. Today's offering of chicken korma smells rather good. We settle for plain coffee and take our seats to a round of applause from the other diners.

  "This could get annoying," Afton admits, with a crooked fake smile, watching me stand up and take a bow. "Don't play up to your audience. You'll only encourage them."

  "They're just pleased we're not dead." I sit again. "I'm pretty pleased myself."

  Afton doesn't reply, drinking her coffee far too hot. I move my cup around the table, letting my eyes unfocus and see blurry patterns in the abstract splashes of curry sauce, spilled salt and tea stains, finding a pouting Mona Lisa and a solar-powered clipper under full sail.

  "You ought to watch your step with Giselle," I hear myself say, amid amazement that I could ever summon up enough bravery to criticise Afton. "Don't push her too far. She's very dangerous."

  "We're all dangerous, big guy – you, me and even drab little Miss Anonymous downstairs." Her pupils are still a shade too wide and her gaze too level. "Why didn't you offer me this sterling advice before I pinned Giselle against the wall? Truth is, without this junk the paramedics gave us fouling up my bloodstream, I wouldn't have dared lay a finger on that Terran bitch!"

  "I'm glad you did," I admit. "Saved me the trouble."

  "Now that I wish I'd seen. With your muscles, you'd have made mincemeat out of her!" She smiles briefly at the picture inside her head. "Talking of our silent gun woman, what was your first impression of her? Didn't look much like a killer, did she?"

  "I think she might just manage to slice and dice a cabbage. I suppose we have to assume that our spook didn't make a mistake and bring in the wrong person?"

  "I suppose," Afton agrees, with a snort of disgust. "After all, one of the Eye's divine elite isn't capable of making a mistake. That's our department."

  I've almost finished my coffee when Lacey sends word that the City's database has ID’ed our suspect. We stop by his office to read the information on screen, while his assistant runs us off a hard copy for Giselle.

  "Say hello to Polly Melissa Molyneux." The snapshot beside her name is far from flattering, but unmistakably her. I scan down the screen. "Unmarried, aged thirty-seven, lives on the improbably-named Key Largo Drive and works as a florist. No previous trouble with the law, not so much as an unpaid bill or an overdue census return. No known associations with any terrorist organisations, unless you count the Prosperity City Ikebana Society."

  "Is that an obscure martial art?" Afton asks hopefully.

  "Sorry, no. It's a kind of stylised flower arranging that originated in Japan, on Earth."

  "Flower arranging?” Afton's face darkens.

  I click to the next page. "Look at this – wonder of wonders, the gun's a legal piece! It's registered, but not to our Polly Molyneux. It's a hunting rifle belonging to a John Curtis of Coromandel Court."

  "I'm so glad we were almost killed by such upstanding citizens," Afton says. "Let's see if we can persuade Miss Molyneux to tell us why."

  When we get back to Interview Five, the uniforms are fidgeting, Lacey is looking nervous and Giselle is leaning against the wall with her arms folded, sulking. Afton gives her a minute to scan the data, then the three of us enter the room.

  Polly Melissa Molyneux is on her fifth cup of tepid tea and our arrival unnerves her so much she nearly loses all of them. I cross the room to activate the recorder and her fear follows me, the simple, helpless terror of a trapped animal. Giselle settles herself in the chair set against the opposite wall, watching the drab woman as Afton begins the interview.

  "I'm Detective-Inspector Lamont and that's my partner, Jerome... "

  "Is he a construct?" the woman asks suddenly, her voice unsteady.

  "No.
On good days, Jerome is almost human." Afton winks at me. "Don't be put off by the way he looks. He's a whole lot smarter than a construct and he won't do violent and unspeakable acts at my bidding."

  "Unless she asks me very nicely!" I fetch out my best unthreatening smile, but Polly's in no mood for a joke.

  Afton takes a seat and continues. "This is a colleague of ours from Terrapol... "

  "From the Mother-world?"

  "That's right."

  I feel a little sorry for the poor woman. She's trembling now, her calm wrecked by the dawning knowledge that she's way out of her depth.

  "You refused to give your name when you were brought to this station," Afton says. "That did you no good, since we've been able to identify you from the City database. You are Polly Melissa Molyneux – isn't that so?"

  "Yes." She tucks her hands away in her lap and her misery increases.

  "Would you care to tell me what you were doing this afternoon, on the south side of Goldangel Canyon?" Afton pauses, fixing the woman with her hardest stare. "With a gun?"

  Polly chooses a lie. "I was hunting."

  "With explosive shells? What exactly were you aiming to kill? Elephant?"

  The woman stares down at her shoes, her answer close to a whisper. "Rabbits."

  Afton whistles. "I don't even want to think about what one of those shells would do to a poor widdle wabbit! There wouldn't be much left for the pot, that's for sure. What were you really doing?"

  The woman retreats into silence. I don't understand why she's so afraid of us, or why she looks so helpless and lost. When I glance at our spook for a clue, I see that Giselle has an air of intense, inward-looking concentration. She senses my gaze, acknowledging it with a thin smile.

  "Okay," Afton says, after several minutes. "We know that the gun isn't yours. Who did you borrow it from?"

  "I don't know why you've brought me here," Polly confesses. "I've done nothing wrong."