Altered Carbon

Which meant I had to go there myself.

I picked up my glass and swallowed some of the drink, not tasting it. The sound it made seemed to wake Bancroft from his daze. He looked up, almost as if he was surprised to see me still there.

“Please excuse me, Mr. Kovacs. This is a lot to take in. After all the scenarios I had envisaged, this is one I had not even considered and it is so simple. So blindingly obvious.” His voice held a wealth of self-disgust. “The truth is that I did not need an Envoy investigator, I simply needed a mirror to hold up to myself.”

I set down my glass and got to my feet.

“You’re leaving?”

“Well, unless you have any further questions. Personally, I think you still need some time. I’ll be around. You can get me at the Hendrix.”

On my way out along the main hall, I came face to face with Miriam Bancroft. She was dressed in the same coveralls she’d been wearing in the garden, hair caught up in an expensive-looking static clip. In one hand she was carrying a trellised plant urn, held up like a lantern on a stormy night. Long strands of flowering martyrweed trailed from the trellis-work.

“Have you—” she started.

I stepped closer to her, inside the range of the martyr-weed. “I’m through,” I said. “I’ve taken this as far as I can stomach. Your husband has an answer, but it isn’t the truth. I hope that satisfies you, as well as Reileen Kawahara.”

At the name, her mouth parted in shock. It was the only reaction that got through her control, but it was the confirmation I needed. I felt the need to be cruel come bubbling insistently up from the dark, rarely visited caverns of anger that served me as emotional reserves.

“I never figured Reileen for much of a lay, but maybe like attracts like. I hope she’s better between the legs than she is on a te

Miriam Bancroft’s face whitened and I readied myself for the slap. But instead, she offered me a strained smile.

“You are mistaken, Mr. Kovacs,” she said.

“Yeah. I often am.” I stepped around her. “Excuse me.” I walked away down the hall without looking back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The building was a stripped shell, an entire floor of warehouse conversion with perfectly identical arched windows along each wall and white painted support pillars every ten metres in each direction. The ceiling was drab grey, the original building blocks exposed and cross-laced with heavy ferrocrete load-bearers. The floor was raw concrete, perfectly poured. Hard light fell in through the windows, unsoftened by any drifting motes of dust. The air was crisp and cold.

Roughly in the middle of the building, as near as I could judge, stood a simple steel table and two uncomfortable-looking chairs, arranged as if for a game of chess. On one of the chairs sat a tall man with a ta

I stepped out from behind one of the pillars and crossed the even concrete to the table. The man in the smock looked up at me and nodded, unsurprised.

“Hello, Miller,” I said. “Mind if I sit down?”

“My lawyers are going to have me out of here an hour after you charge me,” Miller said matter-of-factly. “If that. You’ve made a big mistake here, pal.”

He went back to beating out the jazz rhythm on the table top. His gaze drifted out over my shoulder, as if he’d just seen something interesting through one of the arched windows. I smiled.

“A big mistake,” he repeated to himself.

Very gently, I reached out and flattened his hand onto the table top to stop the tapping. His gaze jerked back in as if caught on a hook.

“The fuck do you think—”

He pulled his hand free and surged to his feet, but shut up abruptly when I stiff-armed him back into his seat. For a moment, it looked as if he might try to charge me, but the table was in the way. He stayed seated, glaring murderously at me and no doubt remembering what his lawyers had told him about the laws of virtual holding.

“You’ve never been arrested, have you Miller?” I asked conversationally. When he made no reply, I took the chair opposite him, turned it around and seated myself astride it. I took out my cigarettes and shook one free. “Well, that statement is still grammatically valid. You’re not under arrest now. The police don’t have you.”

I saw the first flicker of fear on his face.

“Let’s recap events a little, shall we? You probably think that after you got shot, I lit out and the police came to pick up the pieces. That they found enough to rack the clinic up on, and now you’re waiting on due process. Well, it’s partially true. I did leave, and the police did come to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately there’s one piece that was no longer there to pick up, because I took it with me. Your head.” I lifted one hand to demonstrate graphically. “Burned off at the neck and carried out, stack intact, under my jacket.”

Miller swallowed. I bent my head and inhaled the cigarette to life.

“Now the police think that your head was disintegrated by an overcharged blaster on wide beam.” I blew smoke across the table at him. “I charred the neck and chest deliberately to give that impression. With a bit of time and a good forensic expert they might have decided otherwise, but unfortunately your still intact colleagues at the clinic threw them out before they could start a proper investigation. It’s understandable, given what they were likely to find. I’m sure you would have done the same. However, what this means is that not only are you not under arrest, you are in fact presumed Really Dead. The police aren’t looking for you and nor is anybody else.”

“What do you want?” Miller sounded abruptly hoarse.

“Good. I can see you appreciate the implications of your situation. Only natural for a man of your … Profession, I suppose. What I want is detailed information about Head in the Clouds.”

“What?”

My voice hardened. “You heard.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I sighed. This was to be expected. I’d encountered it before, wherever Reileen Kawahara appeared in the equation. The terrified loyalty she inspired would have humbled her old yakuza bosses in Fission City.

“Miller, I don’t have time to fuck about with you. The Wei Clinic has ties to an airborne whorehouse called Head in the Clouds. You probably liaised mostly through an enforcer called Trepp, out of New York. The woman you’re dealing with ultimately is Reileen Kawahara. You will have been to Head in the Clouds, because I know Kawahara and she always invites her associates into the lair, first to demonstrate an attitude of invulnerability, and second to offer some messy object lesson in the value of loyalty. You ever see something like that?”

From his eyes, I could see that he had.

“OK, that’s what I know. Your cue. I want you to draw me a rough blueprint of Head in the Clouds. Include as much detail as you can remember. A surgeon like you ought to have a good eye for detail. I also want to know what the procedures are for visiting the place. Security coding, minimum reasons to justify you visiting, stuff like that. Plus some idea of what the security’s like inside the place.”

“You think I’ll just tell you.”

I shook my head. “No, I think I’m going to have to torture you first. But I’ll get it out of you, one way or the other. Your decision.”

“You won’t do it.”

“I will do it,” I said mildly. “You don’t know me. You don’t know who I am, or why we’re having this conversation. You see, the night before I turned up and blew your face open, your clinic put me through two days of virtual interrogation. Sharyan religious police routine. You’ve probably vetted the software, you know what it’s like. As far as I’m concerned, we’re still in payback time.”