Free Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton Page A

was sitting behind a broad desk with a wall of screens that were rolling down as Sid walked in. “Out,” he barked at Jenson San. The door closed, and the blue secure seal lit up around it. Both window walls turned opaque.
    “What?” Sid exclaimed as O’Rouke glared at him.
    “Not you,” O’Rouke admitted. “I’ve just had a message from the Brussels security commissioner himself. This case just became a whole lot more complicated. Access to all data is now restricted to those already working on the case. Nobody else is to be brought in, no external agency work is to be contracted until further notice. It’s been reclassified: Global Restriction.”
    “You can crap on that okay. Why?”
    “They don’t bother telling me that. All I know is that some specialist supervisor is coming up from London this afternoon to take charge . Fucking Brussels bastards. Take charge! This is my city. No government fuckface comes prancing up here and tells me what goes down on my streets.”
    “Augustine must have stuck his oar in. Which is odd, since Aldred said they wouldn’t.”
    “This isn’t the Norths. This is something else.”
    And Sid could see that not knowing was hurting O’Rouke badly. “Do they want me to close it down?”
    “No. That’s the weirdest piece of this crap. You’re to keep going.”
    “But if I can’t call in experts when I need them, I can’t get anywhere.”
    “I know. Look, Hurst, you’ve built up a shitload of data this morning. Get it all processed ready for this supervisor dick. He’s the one who’s going to say where the investigation goes. Your priority now is to brief your team and make fucking sure nothing gets out. I’ll send down some network nerds to beef up your systems security.”
    “Okay. I’ll get to it.”
    “Are you anywhere near a suspect?”
    “Chief, we don’t even know who he was yet. And that can’t be right, not for a North.”
    “You’ve no idea? None?”
    “No. But …”
    “What? Give me something, man.”
    “Autopsy said he was murdered on Friday.”
    O’Rouke gave him a blank look. “So?”
    “Friday was when they announced the fusion station contract.”
    “Corporate crap,” O’Rouke hissed.
    “I don’t know. But that’s a lot of money even for Northumberland Interstellar. And that much money becomes political. Now we’ve got Brussels interested. I’m joining dots, here.”
    “Shit. All right, this prick will be here late afternoon, apparently. Keep the team at it until he arrives. And Hurst.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Be nice to have a name for the dead North when he gets here. Show the arsehole we don’t need him for anything.”
    “You got it.”
    Sid went back down to the third floor and found the team still busy at their zone consoles. “A new brief for you,” he told them once the secure seal was on. “This is bigger than we originally thought. So big that Brussels has decided to piss off O’Rouke and send an expert over here to take over from me.”
    “What have they got that we haven’t?” Eva asked indignantly. “The Norths have given us an unlimited case budget. We can have this solved by tomorrow.”
    “Uh-huh,” Sid said. “Ari, Abner, have you got a name for me?”
    Abner shook his head diffidently. “Sorry, boss. Not yet.”
    “According to the autopsy prelims, the victim was killed on Friday late morning,” Sid told them. “In other words a North has been missing since then and nobody noticed. Come on, people! This was never a normal case to begin with. Now this. So … we carry on correlating our data, open up some fresh lines of inquiry ready to show our new super-detective when he arrives. Get to it, please.”
    Sid went over to the consoles where Ari and Abner were working. “Really?” he asked in a low voice. “Nothing? Not even a brother who hasn’t been seen for a while?”
    Abner and Ari shared a troubled glance. It was eerie seeing the same features registering identical expressions. “Not even