The City & the City Read Online Free PDF Page B

been done for Sex Buying, had approached a policewoman undercover in a prostitution blackspot. “So we know he’s a John.” He had been off radar since, but was, according to hurried intel, a tradesman selling bits and pieces in the city’s many markets, as well as three days a week from a shop in Mashlin, in western Besźel.
    We could connect him and the van, and the van and Fulana—a direct link was what we wanted. I went to my office and checked my messages. Some make-work on the Styelim case, an update from our switchboard on the posters and two hang-ups. Our exchange had promised for two years to upgrade to allow Caller ID.
    There had been, of course, many people calling to tell us they recognised Fulana, but only a few—the staff who took those calls knew how to filter the deluded and the malicious and to a startling degree were accurate in their judgements—only a few so far that looked worth chasing. The body was a legal assistant in a small practice in Gyedar borough, who had not been seen for days; or she was, an anonymous voice insisted, “a tart called Rosyn ‘The Pout,’ and that’s all you get from me.” Uniforms were checking.
    I told Commissar Gadlem I wanted to go in and talk to Khurusch in his house, get him to volunteer fingerprints, saliva, to cooperate. See how he reacted. If he said no, we could subpoena it and keep him under watch.
    “Alright,” Gadlem said. “But let’s not waste time. If he doesn’t play along put him in seqyestre , bring him in.”
    I would try not to do that, though Besź law gave us the right. Seqyestre , “half-arrest,” meant we could hold a nonwilling witness or “connected party” for six hours, for preliminary interrogation. We could not take physical evidence, nor, officially, draw conclusions from noncooperation or silence. The traditional use was to get confessions from suspects against whom there was not sufficient evidence to arrest. It was also, occasionally, a useful stalling technique against those we thought might be a flight risk. But juries and lawyers were turning against the technique, and a half-arrestee who did not confess usually had a stronger case later, because we looked too eager. Gadlem, old-fashioned, did not care, and I had my orders.
    Khurusch worked out of one of a line of semiactive businesses, in an economically lacklustre zone. We arrived in a hurried operation. Local officers on cooked-up subterfuge had ascertained that Khurusch was there.
    We pulled him out of the office, a too-warm dusty room above the shop, industrial calendars and faded patches on the walls between filing cabinets. His assistant stared stupidly and picked up and put down stuff from her desk as we led Khurusch away.
    He knew who I was before Corwi or the other uniforms were visible in his doorway. He was enough of a pro, or had been, that he knew he was not being arrested, despite our manner, and that therefore he could have refused to come and I would have had to obey Gadlem. After a moment when he first saw us—during which he stiffened as if considering running, though where?—he came with us down the wobbling iron staircase on the building’s wall, the only entrance. I muttered into a radio and had the armed officers we had had waiting stand down. He never saw them.
    Khurusch was a fatly muscular man in a checked shirt as faded and dusty looking as his office walls. He watched me from across the table in our interview room. Yaszek sat; Corwi stood under instructions not to speak, only watch. I walked. We weren’t recording. This wasn’t an interrogation, not technically.
    “Do you know why you’re here, Mikyael?”
    “No clue.”
    “Do you know where your van is?”
    He looked up hard and stared at me. His voice changed—suddenly hopeful.
    “Is that what this is about?” he said eventually. “The van?” He said a ha and sat a little back. Still guarded but relaxing. “Did you find it? Is that —”
    “Find it?”
    “It was stolen. Three