Free Inescapable by Niall Teasdale Page B

white armour gave a shrug. ‘It’s in the MCD. We’re not
quite as hung up about it as the eighteen crowd, but we make an
effort. Have you been able to determine whether anything was
stolen?’
    ‘Marie is
checking now. She cleaned house for the old owner so she knows the
place better than I do…’ He trailed off as Marie wandered back in
to the hall, followed by another officer.
    ‘I can’t see
anything missing,’ she said. ‘So it’s just the security system
bypass that shows there was anyone here.’ She was looking worried,
as though she might not be believed. ‘I should’ve watched for them
outside. If I’d known they were going to run, I’d have waited–’
    ‘You did
exactly the right thing,’ Sam interrupted. ‘Someone who breaks into
a house may not think twice about silencing a witness. They were
interrupted and they left.’
    The older cop
was also nodding. ‘Mister Clarion’s right, Miss.’ He looked back to
Sam. ‘I can get someone down here to run forensics and check for
prints, DNA…’
    Sam shook his
head. ‘Someone professional enough to recognise a vertol overhead
and know what it means is not going to have left enough trace
evidence to get us anywhere. I’ll see to the security and call it a
useful indication of where I need to tighten things up.’
    There was more
nodding and Sam showed the cops to the door, closing it behind them
before he turned back to Marie. ‘You said that the sound you heard
meant they had to be in the utility closet?’
    Marie nodded.
The entrance hallway had doors off it to the left and right which
led into the ground floor rooms, and a staircase which curved up to
the next floor. Set into the angle of that staircase was a doorway
which she went to and opened. ‘I looked in here with that officer,
but I couldn’t see anything wrong.’
    Sam looked now.
There were cables carefully bundled together and fixed to the
walls, ducts up and down to pass those cables through to other
parts of the house, a couple of boxes with blinking lights on them,
and a large panel with an electrical warning sign. Anything to do
with computers and communications had to have blinking lights; Sam
had no clue what the blinking lights meant, but nothing was
alarming about the way they blinked. ‘They must have opened the
door to make the noise you heard?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But it was
closed when we came in here. B and E merchants don’t worry over
closing doors. Uh, breaking and entering, yes? Even if they opened
it to check what was inside, they wouldn’t have bothered closing
it, and there’s no other evidence that they searched anywhere.’
    ‘Well, okay,
but–’
    ‘It means that
they were interested in the contents of this closet, Marie, and
they didn’t want anyone to know they were.’
    Marie frowned.
‘But there’s nothing in that closet.’
    ‘No. Or
apparently that’s the case.’ He paused, glaring at the wiring for a
second. ‘Don’t clean in the hall or this closet for the next few
days. I’ll see if I can get a friend to take a look at it.’
    ‘Your
neighbour?’
    ‘Yes. When she
finally gets back.’
    MarTech East Africa,
28 th March.
    ‘It’s a scratch,’
Duncan said, looking at the enlarged image Pythia was
displaying.
    ‘It is,’ Fox
agreed.
    ‘It could have
happened any time.’
    ‘It could not.
The walls of the duct are aluminium. In air, aluminium oxidises
fairly rapidly forming an oxide surface which is actually tougher
than the metal. It’s considered a good thing. The scratch cuts
through that oxide layer and the layer has started re-growing in
the scratch.’
    Realisation
dawned. ‘So you can estimate the age of the scratch by how much
oxide is in it.’
    ‘Less of an
estimate, given that we have very good records of temperature and
humidity. These scratches were made very recently and we know this
quite precisely.’
    ‘Scratches?’
    ‘This is one of
several the swarms found. Someone, or something, climbed down that
duct, so