Murder in the Fabric
- a George Kostas mystery
Andy Jennings
@andyjennings
Copyright 2014
Cover image: "Photo by David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0"
The Eastern Tollway carefully held four lanes of traffic in each direction moving at exactly 200 kilometers per hour. Peter Simonovic paid no attention to the movement of the cars at all, he didn’t have to. He passed a nondescript plaque at Springvale Road, that marked the opening of the automatic tollway in 2019. There had been quite an argument up to that day, about the whole idea of a road that, in effect, drove the cars for the drivers. Chaos had been predicted, with an imagined catastrophe of cars piling into each other. The day of the opening had come, the dignitaries had gathered, the ribbon had been cut, and somebody important pressed a big green button. The sun shone, and cars had locked together at the maximum speed. Time, that was the pull. It cut the travel time, and the rush rush had won the argument before it had even started.
He reclined the seat as far back as it would go. Quiet music at just a high enough volume to mask the traffic noise. He had long since ceased to marvel at it - in a very real sense this was the most peaceful part of the day. If he turned off all the alerts he could catch a quiet 20 minute nap.
If he had looked around he would have seen a school of cars, much like a school of fish. How do fish keep in formation? If you looked at the school, it was hard to see each movement. Seen together it was like some hidden hand kept them all together. In the case of the school of cars, it was quite simple. Each car sent a radio signal out to a beacon on the road. In a fraction of a second it knew it’s exact position. It immediately sent that position to all of the cars in within radio range. No need for any radical moves, enough to slightly adjust the speed to keep distance between itself and the car in front. The steering followed the beacons. The designers had been quite confident of running it at 300 kilometers per hour, but nobody was quite ready for that.
The school of cars wound its way under the Chandler Highway overpass. Peter angled the seat a bit further back, raising the volume of the music, relishing the peace. Soon he would have to re-engage the manual controls. If he failed to do this before entering the tunnel, then he would be moved to the slow lane, where the slow street level automatic driving was the regime. It would mean he would be late for work.
It was as if he was punched. Thrown sideways, he lurched in the direction of the passenger seat as the car turned to the right suddenly. Heading for the right hand edge of the road.. At a speed of around 150 kilometers per hour, but rapidly braking, the car bounced along the rough ground in the central reservation. Peter was vertical now, grappling with the steering wheel, desperately. No response. It slowed further, and he saw the rope barrier beside him. A malfunction? He scanned the display, but it showed all normal. The speed indicator showed 60 kilometers per hour. At least it’s stopping he thought. Then he was stationary, in the middle of the central reservation.
He tried to remember who to call for car faults. The tollway authority? Police? It was so rare now that he had forgotten what to do. The car had run the full length of the ropeway. A metal cable that kept stray cars on each side of the tollway. Every few kilometres there was a crossover. So that maintenance and emergency vehicles could do a u-turn. He was at the end of the ropeway, stationary.
In one horrible moment, he realised that the car was moving again. it turned slowly right, directly into the path of the oncoming traffic. Furiously he grappled with the steering wheel. He hit any button he could see, trying to at least turn the car off. No response to anything. Whatever had control was not going to let go. Peter tried to calm himself, thinking that it’s just going to merge into the traffic. Maybe it’s going to stop here, he was saying to himself. The car gathered speed again, following the wire barrier.
On this side of the tollway there was not as much traffic. ‘Maybe it’s going to take me home’ he thought suddenly, clutching at something that might be remotely normal. Suddenly, in a powerful lurch, the car threw itself straight into the oncoming traffic. For what seemed an eternity, he saw the desperate face of the truck driver as in an instant the full power of tons of moving metal violently compressed his car.
The school automatically merged around. In seconds the accident site was isolated, and the traffic flowed neatly around it. Overhead the drones hovered, keeping watch. Failing to detect signs of life, they sent the ambulances back.
// George.
George Kostas stood in front of the wall. He stared at his instructions, and spoke, even though nobody was listening. George had the dark good looks of a faded Greek pop star if you looked from a distance. In the lost years of his late thirties, up close you could see the results of late nights spent chasing killers. Bad food, not enough sleep.
“Traffic. It’s traffic. Since when do I do traffic accidents?” he said.
The wall was a display, but it was much more than that. It was a huge interface to the homicide division’s vast computer resources. It changed all the time, bringing updates and new data to the open cases. You could talk to it, or interact via a keyboard. It was the natural descendent of the web search engines of the 00’s. Nowadays it was centre stage to any investigation. It was like having a super-intelligent oracle with access to every piece of data you ever wished you had access to.
George walked back, towards Alice, who was engrossed with something on the screen. He suspected that she was avoiding the conversation.
“That bloody thing. It’s got me out chasing ambulances.” he said.
She looked at the wall, at the images. Yes, it looked like a traffic accident. A very messy one. The body was almost not recognizable as a body. Like a streak of red on a body of metal. In the center reservation of the Eastern Freeway, just past the Chandler Highway off ramp.
“Arguing with the wall, again. Bit like a peasant arguing with the weather, don’t you think?” she said, grinning.
“OK. A truck veers in the wrong direction. Car in the way. Bits. End of story. A sad story, but what’s it got to do with me?”
Alice sighed.
“When was the last time you heard of a car straying at the top level?” she said.
“Top level?” he said.
“The fastest highways. To get onto those the cars and the trucks have to be validated. Why else would we let them go so fast?’ she said.
George paused. She was right. He was harking back to his youth when accidents were common. Alice gestured at the wall for it to receive spoken input.
“Top level highways, casualty toll, last five years.” she said to the wall.
A smattering of graphs came up. No deaths, just a few minor injuries from malfunctions. As Alice had said, it wasn’t just rare. It had ceased. All the accidents were in the manual areas. The sort of thing you didn’t notice, because it was below the radar.
“A car malfunctions. It happens.” he said.
“No it doesn’t.” she said
George glowered, and stared at the wall. Watching all of the pieces come, and find their place. She was right. It was mysterious. Perhaps it was some sort of accident. Or suicide. He watched the video. So steady, considered. The car steadily found its way to the wire gate, turned, and that was it. Somehow it didn’t seem like a suicidal thing to do. Much easier to just drive off a cliff.
// Mia
It was the familiarity that was irritating. Swanston Street. Mia began the walk from the river north along Swanston Street. Not much in the skyline had changed. Except for the advertisements, and the types of cars. If you glanced at it, without looking too closely it was the same Melbourne. Try as she could though, she couldn’t summon up the old feelings.
Ten years really was a long time. She had left as a girl, an innocent. Returned as what? A hardened professional, she thought to herself. Emphasis on the hardened.
In a crowd of backpackers, Mia would blend in totally. For as long as she could remember, that was what she had been. Tall, blond, short but not cropped hair. Eyes that flashed. Only now all of that was blunted by the passage of time. Maybe that was part of it, not to spend the rest of her days as a faded perpetual traveller. She didn’t want to get to that day when she met herself coming in the other direction. Throw in the pull of the only place she had ever thought of as home.
She glanced skywards where her own personal drone was watching over her. She wondered what would happen if she was recognised, or she was in danger. It might be possible to ask, but that wasn’t the hardened thing to do. It betrayed a lack of confidence.
Having arrived so secretly, she became aware of the powers of the backers. According to her passport’s stored log on it’s chip she had flown in on Air Asia this morning out of Kuala Lumpur. All the immigration checks were completed. In actual fact she had been ushered down a back stairway from a private plane, and