Great North Road Read Online Free Page B

risk and founded Northumberland Interstellar, which ultimately came to build the gateway to St. Libra. In turn it was Northumberland Interstellar that pioneered the algaepaddies on the other side, where so much of Grande Europe’s bioil was now produced. They were the board, directing the mighty company’s direction for over fifty years until Bartram and Constantine parted to pursue their own, separate goals, leaving Augustine to lead the bioil colossus.
    But it was the 2Norths who made up the higher echelons of the company management. 2Norths who devotedly ran things for their brother-fathers. 2Norths who had cast-iron links into the very heart of Grande Europe’s political and commercial edifice. 2Norths who ruled their fiefdom of Newcastle with benign totality. 2Norths who would want to know who killed one of their brothers, and why. They’d want to know that with some considerable urgency.
    Think! Sid ordered himself as he shut his eyes to eradicate the sight of his career-killer lying bright and still under the swirling snow. Procedure. Procedure is king. Always.
    He took a breath, trying to summon up a smooth rational outlook: the unfazed take-charge man. An imaginary product of a thousand boring management courses, like a stereotyped zone media cop.
    He opened his eyes.
    The dead North clone stared sightlessly up into the undulating colors of the borealis-plagued sky. His eyes were ruined. Fish? That was an unpleasant notion. Sid gave the odd chest wound a perplexed glance—as if the death weren’t enough, he couldn’t work out what the hell had left such a puncture pattern. Still, at least something like that slicing into the heart would mean it was a quick death. The North wouldn’t have suffered much. Karma was clearly choosing to spread that around everyone else.
    Sid held his hand over the corpse’s face and ordered his e-i to quest a link with the dead man’s bodymesh. The smartcells embedded in the icy dead flesh didn’t care that it was dead. They should still be drawing power from the tweaked adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules that made up the core of their energy transfer system; an oxidative process that would continue to utilize surrounding fats and carbohydrates, just like genuine cells, until the human meat finally started to decay.
    There was no response. Every link icon in Sid’s grid remained inert. The North didn’t have an active bodymesh. “He’s been ripped,” Sid said. Reliving the last few moments of the North’s life—watching the killer stab him through the heart—would probably have resolved the case immediately. Sid knew it would never be that easy, but procedure … He bent over, staring at the corpse’s ruined eyes. It wasn’t easy in the harsh glare thrown by the boat’s spotlights, but he could just make out the tiny cuts in the eyeball’s lens, as if an insect had been nibbling away. “More than ripped, actually. Looks like they extracted the smartcells, too.”
    “Aye, man. That’ll be a pro hit, then,” Ian said.
    “Yeah. Turn his hands over please,” he asked the divers with their rubber gloves. The skin on the tip of every white frozen finger was missing. Somebody was trying to make identification difficult, which might make sense for a normal crime victim, but a North …?
    “Okay,” Sid said abruptly. “Get the examiner down here to clear and retrieve the body. I’m now officially reclassifying this case as a one-oh-one. All records to be backed up and forwarded to my case file.” He turned to the two divers. “Was there anything else out there where you found the body?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Captain, once the body’s been taken ashore I want this boat back out there, and the area where you found the body searched again.”
    “Of course,” Darian said.
    “Is it worth giving the area a sonar sweep?”
    “It’s not the best resolution, but we can certainly check for anything unusual.”
    Both of them glanced back at the chest