Murder in the Fabric Read online

driven away in a car. She had quickly disappeared into the nether reaches of Melbourne. Perhaps they had even doctored the surveillance footage at the airport, she thought.

  Her apartment was neat, anonymous. It had to be. In a large block with hundreds of them. There was protection in density. In crowds. To get out of the apartment into the city took some doing. The local fashion, the local culture, worked in her favour. With the spread of surveillance, the placement of cameras on every corner, the Melbournians had grown weary of it. They knew about the car tracking. Once you were in a car, they could follow that car anywhere in the city from the control centre. If you walked then the gait analysis software would grab you. It only took a couple of traces, no more than a couple of hundred seconds of walking.

  Everyone walked slightly differently. So any doubts about your identity were quickly resolved from the analysis. It meant you couldn’t walk down to the shop to buy some milk without the system tagging you. Years of the pervasive surveillance somehow caused a shift in behaviour. Overnight black hooded attire, almost identical, became the fashion. Dark glasses also. To defeat the gait analysis software, bicycles, identical single-geared bicycles.

  Mia almost laughed at the simplicity of it. Streaming out onto Docklands with hundreds of other clones, she was grateful. Somewhere to hide. In the open air of Swanston Street there was enough of a crowd though to defeat the tagging software.

  The instructions were clear. A location, a message. She had to be within ten metres of the location to get the message. Not the sort of thing to put on a network. Any network. Although the backers were strong, they were cautious.

  It was cold. Not really cold by global standards. But very cold by Nha Trang norms. Her thoughts drifted. To the charms of her previous life. The freelancer in almost perpetual motion, around the globe. Being forced to trade that was quite different to choosing to trade it. She had reached the end of that road, she knew that. But at one level she wanted to somehow, find a way.

  She had a flash of Binh’s apartment. Not in the most expensive part of Nha Trang. Away from the beach, almost out into the fields. You could see the rice paddies from his window. A flash of waking, slipping out of bed and staring at the rice fields. Of feeling at home, at rest. For a moment. It was only a week ago, but already it seemed a long time. In her heart she knew that she would never see Nha Trang again.

  Turning into Collins Street, she went a few steps, then ducked into a shop. Turning to look at every person behind her, and across the street. Watching for a tail, or anything suspicious. She couldn’t remember a time when this wasn’t part of it.

  She checked the address again. In the way of these things, she was to make only one pass. The modern equivalent of the letter stuck to the bottom of the seat in a park.

  It was a bank, she realised. She only had a hundred metres to go. Again desperately scanning the street. Taking out the phone, and getting ready. Walking more slowly as the address came up. As she walked, setting it to accept incoming bluetooth connections. Then in a matter of seconds it was over. The transmitter hidden in the wall negotiated a connection with her phone, sent the right code, the right passwords, and the message was delivered.

  Mia ducked into the arcade and looked at the screen. It was a simple enough message.

  “Rainbow Cafe, 2pm, Oscar.”

  In case of ambiguity it had coordinates and a map location.

  She made her way back to the apartment to wait until it was time to meet. Up in the lift, then an anonymous white door. But behind the door, it was no ordinary apartment. The living room was large, but the equipment made it look tiny. Huge screens covered one wall. All turned off. She resisted the urge to hit a button, and just sat staring at the view. Waiting for the rendezvous time.

  // George

  George adjusted the microphone to be closer to his lips. Unlike the younger staff, he preferred to interact with the wall quietly.

  “Background on Peter Simonovic.” he said.

  The wall paused for a moment then spewed out an array of standard reports. Birth certificate, school record, drivers license. Anything official. No police record. Employment history. Credit history.

  Mr Normal, he thought.

  Alice and Steve were occupied. Only glancing occasionally towards George. Pleased in a way that he was actually doing it. Too many times he relied on them to do the interaction with the wall.

  “Mr Average.” Alice said.

  “Yes. Almost too average.” George said.

  “Like I said. It’s a zero probability event.” she said. Hinting that looking at the car and the roadway systems might be a good place to start.

  “I’m going to look at the scene.” George said.

  Alice and Steve exchanged glances. Knowing that attempting to dissuade George was something you considered very carefully. George had trouble getting access to the centre reservation of the highway. The road operators were not keen on a distraction in the middle of high speed traffic.

  “But they are all on automatic, aren’t they?” he said over the phone.

  “Yes. But.” the operator said.

  “But what?” George said

  There was a distinct pause. He suspected they were relieved that he had not taken up Alice and Steve’s suggestion. That the most likely cause was a malfunction in the roadway systems.

  “If anything happens, it’s on you.” the operator said.

  He didn’t even think about asking the operators to empty a lane for him just so he could walk down it. They were already on edge from the incident. Their people had already fed the media the suicide line, so having a homicide detective prying in public view wasn’t good for business. Instead, he just got the tram down Nicholson Street and walked from there. Most of the traffic went into the tunnel, so it was easy enough to walk east toward the tollway. He had to climb down a ladder at Hoddle Street, then follow a set of walkway markers. In the middle of the Eastern tollway, just before the Chandler exit. Cars whizzing past in both directions at 200 kilometres per hour. It was lonely. It was weird. He had Steve on the phone talking him through. He was walking the path of the car. No skid marks.

  “How do these things work?” George asked.

  “Which part? The car part, the highway part?” Steve said.

  “Start at the beginning.”

  “Well the highway part is simple. It has to be, since it is duplicated every few metres along the road. Passive beacons. Each with a magic number. The car interrogates the beacon and gets a number back. Each beacon is unique. With a string of beacon numbers, the car works out where it is, and how fast it is going.”

  George continued to follow the tyre trail. Since the ground in the middle was soft, and cars didn’t travel across normally, it was easy to find.

  “What stops the cars from running into each other?”

  “They detect the beacons set into the road. Adjusts the speed to keep a fixed distance. If there is a likely collision then it will slow down. They form into platoons naturally.”

  “Multi-car pile-ups?”

  “Never happened. Well not yet, anyway.”

  “So how does one car go feral?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Start by looking at the car.”

  “It’s in the workshop?”

  “Accident analysis. You want me to contact them?”

  “No, its ok. I’m finished here. I’ll head straight there.”

  He retraced his steps back to the beginning of the freeway. There was no way that he could cross the streams of traffic. He had no doubt that they would stop for him, but it wasn’t good to hold them up just so he could save five minutes.

  On the tram to the workshop, George was distracted. It all looked like a traffic accident to him. A car goes crazy, jumps the barrier. No matter how they talked about systems not failing, everything had a weak point. He wanted desperately to shuffle this one off to someone else. Except that the wall, and Kate had other ideas.

  The workshop was in Br
unswick. Off Smith street. In a back alley. It didn’t look official, and George realised why. How many cars would they do a year? So few now, with all of the automatic systems. Bit dodo like this was. He could remember all of the car workshops of his youth. An overwhelming smell of petrol hit him as he turned the corner into the garage. Gingerly he made his way towards the car. He showed his ID.

  “Nick.”

  “George Kostas.” he showed his ID.

  “I’ve heard of you. Weren’t you on the TV a while ago?”

  “Best we don’t mention that.” Nick grinned. No, he wasn’t going to rub it in. At least not now that he could see that George wasn’t perhaps the stuck up celebrity he thought he was.

  “Rogue car? Malfunctions and jumps the wrong direction.” There was a long pause.

  “Could happen.” he said.

  George smiled. He pictured himself flick passing the case to traffic. Getting the wall off his back.

  Nick continued “Except that I ran the integrity tests. All of them. It passed all of them. There is nothing wrong with the guidance systems.”

  George looked discouraged. His thoughts turned to angles. Motives. Perhaps our dead friend’s wife had a lover. A lover that was the best computer hacker on the planet. One that left no trace.

  “Can I take it to somebody?” he said.

  “Sure. It all pops out. Just a processor and some memory. You can take it with you.”

  Back on the tram with a small box in his pocket. Rattling down Nicholson Street. Past the housing commission. Where a group of the