crossword?
Then the ‘incoming message’ tones sounded again. Another automated message from Lost Property, to say they still hadn’t found his handheld.
* * *
Belle Hopp was at 270’s Reception desk, processing this descent’s passenger intake. She was in discussion with a middle-aged, dark-haired woman when Gordon strode up.
“Gordon—” Belle began.
“Belle, we’ve got a problem.”
“Gordon—”
“It’s the handheld.”
“Gordon—”
“I’ve contacted Lost Property. They say the handheld didn’t come through them.”
“Gordon—”
“So whoever dropped it off here, it wasn’t—”
“GORDON!”
“What, Belle?”
“Dress!”
Gordon glanced down. “Oh.”
* * *
Why would a criminal have opted to return the handheld? It didn’t make sense. If Gordon’s involvement at the crime scene had only been a matter of wrong place, wrong time—he hadn’t personally witnessed the attack on Havmurthy, but he’d been in the vicinity—then there was nothing for the killer to gain, and everything to lose, by returning the handheld. Assuming it was returned unaltered.
The handheld wouldn’t have been either valuable, or very useful, to whoever had killed Havmurthy. It was far from a state-of-the-art device, and while Gordon had a lot of material stored on it, the information contained was hardly of a calibre to provoke theft. (Even the elevator blueprints relevant to Gordon’s sometime role as 270’s Safety Officer could hardly be considered ‘sensitive’—they’d been freely available on the worlds-wide-web for years now. Aside from the blueprints, there were a few freeware detection apps, forensic plugins, and criminal-code modules, compressed electronic cheek by virtual jowl alongside a myriad saved crossword puzzles, sudokus, riddles, mazes, trivia questionnaires and solitaire card games.)
So, nothing of significant value. Nor did it seem that anything had been erased from the device.
Which suggested, Gordon suspected, that something had been added to it. But what, where, and why?
* * *
“But you can’t just go around treating them as suspects,” Belle protested.
“Why not? They were all on Skytop when Havmurthy got killed,” said Gordon, flicking his eyes towards the top of the obs-deck panoramic window, through which the sunlit edge of the Skytop Plaza was still visible, several kilometres above. Module 270 had commenced its descent just five minutes earlier, inching down the thick carbon-and-metal cable that connected Skytop, like some colossal spider suspended at the end of a gravity-inverted silk strand, with Earth’s surface. Back up on Skytop, Module 271 would be already preparing to start its own descent, one of so many pearls that cascaded in an endless progression down the superhigh-tensile elevator cable. The view in either direction was an impressive sight, and one which always left Gordon feeling slightly uneasy: he wasn’t great with heights.
“Yes, so they were on Skytop,” replied Belle. “So were thousands of other people. Gordon, you’ve said it yourself. The hotel police don’t have anything on anybody. ‘Couldn’t find a limburger in a lingerie shop’ was what you said earlier.”
“No, what I said was that they’re so busy trying to enforce this comms lockdown—the Saturn hyperdrive thing that Judy Sargent mentioned—that they don’t have the resources to deploy to get to the bottom of the Havmurthy murder. And that’s true, I tried comming them about my handheld getting returned, all I got was a recorded message, ‘All our officers are busy at the moment, but your life-threatening emergency will be attended bla bla bla’. The email I sent them bounced. And when I called again, it wouldn’t even go through. So no, I don’t think the hotel police are going to be able to help much, they’re too preoccupied. So it’s up to the people on the ground … uh, the people on the … well, what I mean,
Then the ‘incoming message’ tones sounded again. Another automated message from Lost Property, to say they still hadn’t found his handheld.
* * *
Belle Hopp was at 270’s Reception desk, processing this descent’s passenger intake. She was in discussion with a middle-aged, dark-haired woman when Gordon strode up.
“Gordon—” Belle began.
“Belle, we’ve got a problem.”
“Gordon—”
“It’s the handheld.”
“Gordon—”
“I’ve contacted Lost Property. They say the handheld didn’t come through them.”
“Gordon—”
“So whoever dropped it off here, it wasn’t—”
“GORDON!”
“What, Belle?”
“Dress!”
Gordon glanced down. “Oh.”
* * *
Why would a criminal have opted to return the handheld? It didn’t make sense. If Gordon’s involvement at the crime scene had only been a matter of wrong place, wrong time—he hadn’t personally witnessed the attack on Havmurthy, but he’d been in the vicinity—then there was nothing for the killer to gain, and everything to lose, by returning the handheld. Assuming it was returned unaltered.
The handheld wouldn’t have been either valuable, or very useful, to whoever had killed Havmurthy. It was far from a state-of-the-art device, and while Gordon had a lot of material stored on it, the information contained was hardly of a calibre to provoke theft. (Even the elevator blueprints relevant to Gordon’s sometime role as 270’s Safety Officer could hardly be considered ‘sensitive’—they’d been freely available on the worlds-wide-web for years now. Aside from the blueprints, there were a few freeware detection apps, forensic plugins, and criminal-code modules, compressed electronic cheek by virtual jowl alongside a myriad saved crossword puzzles, sudokus, riddles, mazes, trivia questionnaires and solitaire card games.)
So, nothing of significant value. Nor did it seem that anything had been erased from the device.
Which suggested, Gordon suspected, that something had been added to it. But what, where, and why?
* * *
“But you can’t just go around treating them as suspects,” Belle protested.
“Why not? They were all on Skytop when Havmurthy got killed,” said Gordon, flicking his eyes towards the top of the obs-deck panoramic window, through which the sunlit edge of the Skytop Plaza was still visible, several kilometres above. Module 270 had commenced its descent just five minutes earlier, inching down the thick carbon-and-metal cable that connected Skytop, like some colossal spider suspended at the end of a gravity-inverted silk strand, with Earth’s surface. Back up on Skytop, Module 271 would be already preparing to start its own descent, one of so many pearls that cascaded in an endless progression down the superhigh-tensile elevator cable. The view in either direction was an impressive sight, and one which always left Gordon feeling slightly uneasy: he wasn’t great with heights.
“Yes, so they were on Skytop,” replied Belle. “So were thousands of other people. Gordon, you’ve said it yourself. The hotel police don’t have anything on anybody. ‘Couldn’t find a limburger in a lingerie shop’ was what you said earlier.”
“No, what I said was that they’re so busy trying to enforce this comms lockdown—the Saturn hyperdrive thing that Judy Sargent mentioned—that they don’t have the resources to deploy to get to the bottom of the Havmurthy murder. And that’s true, I tried comming them about my handheld getting returned, all I got was a recorded message, ‘All our officers are busy at the moment, but your life-threatening emergency will be attended bla bla bla’. The email I sent them bounced. And when I called again, it wouldn’t even go through. So no, I don’t think the hotel police are going to be able to help much, they’re too preoccupied. So it’s up to the people on the ground … uh, the people on the … well, what I mean,
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