The Administration Series (160 page)

"He's not fit to leave the hospital," the medic repeated adamantly. "Still less for anything else."

Toreth glanced at her name badge — something unpronounceable with far too many vowels. "I'll make that assessment. I have plenty of experience in scheduling injured prisoners for interrogation. Believe me, I don't want him to die any more than you do."

"I won't release him so you can — "

Toreth held up his hand. "I'm going to give you one chance to reconsider the end of that sentence, Doctor. Unless you'd like to accompany Theo back to I&I."

She stopped, jaw clenching. Toreth watched curiously, wondering if she'd have the guts to go through with it. They so rarely did. Finally, she nodded.

"Wait here, please," she said.

Toreth looked at his watch and swore under his breath. It had taken until now, almost nine o'clock, to get to speak to the medic. In the end, he'd had to threaten arrests for obstruction. He hoped B-C had had better luck back at I&I.

Half an hour later, when the medic walked back into the room, the mixture of fear and defiance on her face told him what she was going to say before she spoke. Stupid of him to have let her go alone. The shooting must have shaken him up more than he'd realised.

"I'm afraid it won't be possible for you to speak to your prisoner," the medic said. "He died of complications from his injuries about fifteen minutes ago."

Bullshit that stank worse than the room he'd found Theo in. "Did he say anything?"

"Nothing." Her right hand clenched and unclenched. "Nothing at all."

"I see." Without taking his eyes from her face, Toreth said, "Nagra, I want the security recording from Theo's room. Just to make absolutely sure he didn't have any interesting last words for us."

Her gaze darted to the door, and Toreth shook his head. "Try it, if you like."

She straightened. "I have nothing to be ashamed of."

He and Nagra watched the recording in the security centre at the hospital. The unpronounceable doctor stood between them.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't do anything." Her voice soft, only just audible on the microphones. "I tried."

"Can't go back there." Theo's hand on her arm, his voice weak. "Can't. Please.
Please
."

Then Toreth could do nothing but watch as the medic gave the injection to his prize bloody witness and then stood by the bed, waiting, finally calling the resuscitation team. The irony was that Toreth had done it so many times himself, albeit under the unofficially official sanction of an annex order. How the hell had the woman imagined she'd get away with it?

"Want to tell me it was painkillers?" Toreth asked her.

She shook her head, eyes tearing.

"Get the guards down from Theo's room," Toreth said to Nagra. "I think we can trust them to process her. Tell them to put her in a cell until we get the results of the post-mortem."

On the way out, he thought of Vassilakis. No fucking resisters in Athens, indeed.

"Right, we've lost Theo, which is unfortunate. And Karteris won't play."

The next morning, Toreth addressed his team of two back at I&I.

"However, it's not hopeless. We have the lists of Theo's contacts from his first arrest. The lists are probably suspect, but it's the best we've got. What we do have is a general level four damage waiver. Vassilakis signed it himself, Justice are processing it now. We've got Theo to thank for that, for taking the shots at me, so we shouldn't think too badly of him."

"So we get cracking as soon as we bring them in?" Nagra asked.

"Yes. Arrests should be starting soon. We need help, so I've asked the General Criminal section here to lend us some investigators. Not ideal, but it's the best I can do for now. The alternative is to call in a lot more help from New London, and that risks Internal Investigations hearing about it and coming in to take the whole damn case away. B-C, did you find out anything yesterday?"

"Yes, Para. I went down to stores, and there's a comm jammer missing, all right, machine ID matches the one from the scene. But, big surprise, it wasn't officially signed out."

"Right. Well, it's probably a waste of time, but see if anyone will admit to anything. And then — "

Someone knocked on the door.

"Yes?"

Nikoletta opened it, started a sentence, then stopped when she saw B-C and Nagra.

"Uh, Para? Section Head Makrigiannakis would like to see you. Right away."

George's office was even plusher than Vassilakis's. When Toreth walked in, he actually stopped to look down, because he thought he'd stepped in something unpleasant. In fact it was the deep-pile rug, fantastically patterned and exquisitely dyed. The wooden sideboard looked like it belonged in a mansion or — judging by the extensive range of drinks at one end — a restaurant.

"Did you want me, George?" Toreth asked.

The section head didn't ask him to sit down. "Why is Senior Para-investigator Karteris on the detention level?"

If you'd been here yesterday, you lazy bastard, you'd know that. "Because I told someone to put him there."

The section head's eyes narrowed, which meant that they virtually vanished in his pudgy face. "The detention officer said that you ordered he be denied access to a Justice rep."

"I told them not to rush processing him, yes."

"He has a right to a rep. He claims that you've got him there because of a few irregularities with his drug sign-outs. Is that right?"

Toreth said nothing. After a few seconds, George asked, "What evidence do you have against him?"

Not as much as I'd like. "I'm afraid I can't discuss that. I have my reasons."

"This is my section, Para-investigator, and — "

"And I get my authority from I&I headquarters in New London, not from you. If you don't like the way I do my job, file a complaint."

Without waiting for a dismissal, he left George spluttering outrage and went to start organising the arrests.

The next day, Toreth and Nagra met up in the canteen for a late lunch. They bought sandwiches and took them outside, where the chances of being overheard were lower. Probably a little late in the day now, since Theo's death and his acquaintances' arrests were hardly secrets, but Toreth thought there was no point in taking chances.

"Get anything?" Toreth asked as he unwrapped his lunch.

"Nothing, Para. And I'm afraid the second prisoner I worked on is in medical. But he didn't know anything. In fact, I doubt he had any more to do with any resistance than I do."

"Why the hell is he in medical?" Unlike Nagra to be careless.

"I made a mistake with the dosage. I'm sorry, Para. It was an old model injector."

"Damn. Well, it's inside the waiver, unless he dies. Nothing else?"

"'Fraid not. I sent the third one back to the cells before I stopped for lunch. Nothing again, unless she was hiding it well. But you know how it is — quick, thorough, safe. Pick any two."

The news would have been less depressing if Toreth had had any better success himself.

"Para!" Toreth looked up to see B-C approaching at a trot. "Para! Karteris is gone."

"
Gone
?" Toreth wondered if he'd misheard. "As in dead?" Suicide?

The investigator stopped by them, breathing quickly, and shook his head. "Gone as in not in detention."

"How the fuck can he be gone? How long?"

"Late yesterday afternoon. His twenty-four hours for a Justice rep to be appointed expired and G — Section Head Makrig — " B-C took a few breaths.

"George, right. Get on with it."

"The section head signed a release for him. The security officer said he brought it down in person."

"He doesn't have the authority. Not over an internal review. That would take a division head." Who was another member of the favoured elite. "Vassilakis?"

"I haven't seen the paperwork, but probably."

"Shit." There was nothing to be done about it now except make sure it was included in Toreth's final report. "I don't suppose there's any sign of Karteris?"

"As far as I can tell, he hasn't been seen since yesterday. I heard about it while you were in interrogation, and I've been chasing rumours round the building that he was still here somewhere. But I'd say Political have been covering up for him, although you'd never be able to pin it on them as deliberate. He supposedly left a lot of messages, saying he'd be in various places he hasn't been anywhere near. He's run, for sure."

"The alias? Taki?"

"That's the other thing. There's almost eight thousand gone from his accounts. Probably all he could get out on short notice, but nowhere near all of it. It's possible that he doesn't know we know, so he might be travelling under that name."

Possible, but not likely. A feeling based primarily on the fact that if Toreth had been in Karteris's place, he wouldn't have risked it. "Put out an arrest warrant for Karteris, under both names."

"He's probably outside the Administration by now," Nagra said.

"I know." Toreth closed his half-finished pack of sandwiches. "I'm going back to try again. The sooner we get on with it, the sooner someone will know
something
."

Mass interrogation was never Toreth's favourite technique. It was boring, took too much time, and smacked of desperation — something people did when they'd run out of intelligent ideas.

However, there had been at least one more person at the square, up on the roof. Setting aside the small chance that it was Karteris himself — which would have been a monstrously stupid risk Toreth couldn't imagine the man taking — then it was probably someone known to Theo. Odds were that the name would be in the system somewhere. It was damned difficult to lose records, and the chances of Karteris having a Warrick at his disposal were fortunately small.

Of Nagra's three words, Toreth went for safe and quick for the rest of the afternoon's interrogations. The brief interrogations backed up his theory that the contacts listed in the file knew nothing about any resistance.

He was explaining the terms of the damage waiver to the sixth (and hopefully last) prisoner, when Nagra called him out of the room.

She was waiting for him in the office upstairs, standing by his desk.

"You aren't going to like this, Para," she said. "Justice have Karteris."

Toreth stared. "Where? When?"

"The coast guard found him at lunchtime on a beach, few miles down the coast. Drowned." She looked at him, then said, "I said you wouldn't like it."

She was dead right, although she didn't know the real reason why. Toreth sat slowly, keeping his back straight, deliberately relaxing his abdominal muscles. Sickness is mostly tension, he told himself firmly.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Someone reported a motorboat drifting this morning. Turns out it was the one Karteris owns a part share in. The engine was dead — mechanical failure. Unlucky for him that there weren't any oars or even a life jacket on it. The pathologist thinks that he tried to swim to the shore and just didn't make it."

"Why — " Toreth swallowed. "Why the hell would he try to swim?"

"He must've known he'd have been picked up the next day. It's so busy around there that the boat was spotted almost as soon as the sun got up. They found a suitcase on it. Clothes, but no ID — which is why we didn't hear about it right away — and no sign of the money. Probably at the bottom of the Med."

Toreth turned away, trying to look at the situation objectively. Did it make sense? A gut instinct said that something was wrong, but when he tried to pin it down it was washed away by the sickening idea of Karteris dead. No. Karteris dying. Of —

"Excuse me," Toreth said.

He managed to make it down the corridor at a walk, not a run, until he reached the toilet door. Then he was forced to press a hand over his mouth, fighting the choking tightness in his throat. He crashed through the door, pushing past a startled investigator, barely hearing the man's protest.

Toreth dropped onto his knees inside the cubicle, then he was lost in the darkness, surrendering helplessly to his body's memory, his stomach emptying in wrenching spasms.