Ronan Lewis had divorced Kristina Nixon five years ago. According to his national profile, he was an architect, and he'd taken his degree at Bright Light University. Kristina had graduated the same year as him, and so I assumed they'd met there.
Bright Light wasn't the only city university, or even the most prestigious -- that title went to the institute that took the city's name. But Socrico University only offered academic subjects, and it was geared towards the cleverest people in the country. Bright Light, among a few others, provided education for everyone who didn't make the cut.
Architecture was a struggling profession when no city had enough space carved out of the earth to expand, and the struggle showed in Ronan's choice of neighbourhood. At seven o'clock, Alex and I waded through a sea of rubbish to reach his building, where we were forced to climb the stairs to the fourth floor because the lift was out of service. Alex took them two at a time as if that was easier for his long legs. I straggled after him, panting.
We emerged in a narrow corridor where rude drawings had been scribbled beneath peeling patches of wallpaper. Alex rang Ronan's doorbell. The camera in the wood took a long time to unveil itself.
"May we come in?" I asked.
Nothing happened for a good ten seconds. Eventually, a crackled voice moaned, "Let me ask Ronan."
"That needs replacing," Alex muttered as we readied our warrant cards. "It wouldn't even cost much."
I smiled.
"What?" His mouth quirked upwards at one corner.
"Sometimes I wonder how you put up with me, Mr Technology."
He smiled properly. "You do, at least, keep your gadgets up to date."
A distorted voice suddenly emerged from the camera. "Who is it?"
"Inspector Rames and Sergeant Sullivan," I said. "Socrico Police."
We held our warrant cards up so that Ronan could look at them -- or try to. The camera wasn't capturing us very well. Unless Ronan was getting a better version inside, he wouldn't be able to see the details on our cards at all. I couldn't.
"Come in," he said.
The door opened with a long creak. Alex glared at it.
We walked straight into an open plan kitchen and living room, although both were so tiny that it seems better to say we entered a cramped living room with two rows of counters tacked on the end. A couple of blue sofas had been squashed against the opposite walls, and a coffee table stood between them, littered with papers. We took one step over the linoleum floor to Ronan Lewis. Laney and a family liaison officer drew away from him.
"Thank you," I said as they squeezed past us.
Kristina's death had clearly hit Ronan hard, despite their divorce. He was sitting on one of the tattered sofas, bent over and pale-faced.
I stopped in front of him. "We're sorry for your loss."
Ronan looked up, running a hand over the back of his short, dark hair. He was dressed in a cheap suit and checked shirt, rumpled as if he'd slept in them. Although I knew he was thirty-one, he looked at least a decade older. His face was heavily lined, especially around his bloodshot eyes.
We sat down on the other sofa. If it hadn't been for the lack of a breeze, the flat would have been just as cold as the outside world. I buried my hands in my pockets. "First of all, a routine question. Where were you at five o'clock this morning?"
Ronan cast his eyes over the barren room as if he was registering its contents for the first time in a while. His gaze rested on the papers covering the coffee table. "Here. I was working on a project into the early hours. I passed out on the sofa."
"Can anyone else confirm that?"
"No." His face crumpled. "Since...Kristina...it's just been me."
"You lived here together?" Alex asked.
"No, no. We were renting somewhere else. We both moved afterwards. I didn't have much money left after the divorce, so..." He looked around again. "Here I am."
I looked around again, too. The room held no personal effects aside from his papers, so I picked one up and looked at it.
Alex stayed still. "Do you mind me asking why you divorced?"
"It was just one of those things -- the marriage slowly starts turning bitter, and then, one day, you realise you're not in love anymore. Seems pointless to stay together after that. We felt we were holding each other back."
I flattened the paper out. It was an architectural drawing. "You can afford real paper. Most architects make their plans on tablets."
"It's the only luxury I stretch my money for. I prefer doing it all by hand."
I stared at the drawings. I knew nothing about architecture, so I quickly discovered that I had no idea whether Ronan was talented or not. I folded the paper up again. "Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm Kristina?"
He lowered his head. "No. God, I can't believe she was murdered."
"Did she know anyone with enough talent to hack into a robot without leaving a trace?"
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Kristina could hack things. She had a degree in robotic science, and she dreamed of working for a company like Ackerman Electronics. But it's a competitive field."
"Did you keep in touch after your divorce?" Alex asked. "Or at least hear if she had any boyfriends?"
Ronan slowly raised his head, his expression darkening. "No, I never heard anything. But she always carried a torch for her university boyfriend, Zed Croft. So maybe she went back to him."
***
The lights were finally starting to turn on when we left Ronan's flat. We stopped in the main lobby, and Alex loaded Zed Croft's national profile on his tabphone. I leaned closer to look at it.
Zed Croft, in his picture at least, was a slim and good-looking man with slicked blond hair, a naughty smile, and what I would bet were a designer suit and solid gold watch. Something of a party boy attitude showed in his eyes.
He was thirty-one, and he was the owner of the very successful Duty Bank, which he'd opened six years ago. He'd taken a robotic science degree at Bright Light University.
We tracked him and discovered that despite the dark hour, he was already at work, and so we went in search of the nearest tram. When we'd caught one, we sat down behind a grinder with silver elf ears, and I blew on my hands to warm up. The city trundled past us, shadows clinging to the edges of the roads. Metal walkways climbed around the skyscrapers. Neon signs glimmered between them, advertising electrode earphones and fake flowers for Valentine's Day.
When the robotic driver announced that we'd reached Platinum Lane, we got off. The cold morning air hit us again, and I shoved my hands into my pockets with a scowl. "I need coffee. And chocolate."
In my peripheral vision, Alex smiled.
Duty Bank occupied the first two floors of a cutting-edge glass skyscraper near the mouth of the road. I stood in front of the automatic doors and waited for them to open. Nothing happened.
"Amber." Alex sounded amused. "Read the sign."
I looked to the left of the doors and realised that in my impatience, I hadn't clocked the words written on the tinted glass window. Please use scanner to gain entry. "You have to be a client to get in?"
Alex glanced at a discrete facial recognition scanner next to the sign. "I guess so. But flashing our warrant cards should do it."
I shuffled over so that we were both standing in front of the camera. "If anyone's listening...Inspector Rames and Sergeant Sullivan, Socrico Police. We'd like to speak with Zed Croft."
"Come in," a clear, female voice said immediately. "Wait in the lobby, and I'll take you to him."
The doors opened, and we entered a gleaming white hall. A string of glass doors ran down both long sides, and a transparent lift like a sparkling crystal stood proud at the end of the room. A handful of steps in the middle of the space led to a small island bearing a robot-operated desk, and a few other silver robots with rifles were standing by the walls. It was silent.
A door suddenly flew open on the other side of the room, and a young woman with soft waves of toffee-coloured hair came out. She walked towards us as fast as she looked like she could go in her high heels -- or as fast as her tight pencil skirt would let her. Her cheeks were pink.
She extended her hand as she drew closer. "Hello! I'm Mary Daniels, Mr Croft's personal assistant."
I was so taken aback by her enthusiasm that it was Alex she ended up shaking hands with first.
Once we'd got that bit out of the way, she led us to the end of the hall. I thought we were heading for the lift, but she stopped next to the door beside it and knocked on the glass. All I could see inside was empty space.
"Mr Croft?" she called. "I've got some police officers. Inspector Rames and -- "
"Come in."
She pushed the door open and held it for us.
We entered the office. Zed Croft was sitting behind a glass desk at the far end, operating five tablets. Nothing else was in there aside from a potted house plant and a bowl of mints at Zed's elbow. I could smell them from where I was standing.
I held up my warrant card again. "Inspector Rames. This is Sergeant Sullivan."
Zed waved us over.
There was nowhere for us to sit, so we stood in front of him. It felt a bit like reporting to Dixon.
Mary followed us and hovered at my side. "Would you like me to take your coats? Or fetch you a drink? We have -- "
"Just stay," Zed snapped. "And be silent. I'm sure this won't take long."
"We need to talk to you about Kristina Nixon," I said. "Ronan Lewis told us you were her boyfriend while you were studying at Bright Light University."
"That's right." Zed sat back in his chair. "What a looker she was then. And what fun, too. God! She turned into a plodder when she got with Ronan." He laughed.
"Kristina Nixon is dead, Mr Croft," Alex said.
The smirk dropped off his face. "What?"
"She was murdered just after five o'clock this morning at The Diamond Hotel. Where were you?"
"Working in here, as Mary will tell you." He forced some joviality back into his voice. "I do like to start my day bright and early! What happened to her?"
"Someone hacked into one of The Diamond's robots," I said, "and it clubbed her to death."
"Oh." He paled. "That's horrific. Poor Kristina."
"Have you been involved with her since your university days?"
"No. But I bet good old Ronan's told you that I have been, hasn't he? He always had a bee in his bonnet about Kristina and me. You see, she never got over me after we broke up, and it was rather plain for him to see."
"But she married Ronan."
"She just settled for him when I'd made it clear that I was no longer interested. He'd always liked her at university."
"Right." If one thing was plain to see, it was the size of Zed's ego. "I don't suppose you can think of anyone who might have wanted to cause her harm?"
He steepled his fingers under his chin. "Nope, sorry. We didn't really keep in touch. I have no idea what she was doing with her life -- or who she was making enemies of."
***
Mary let us out of the office when we were finished, apologising for Zed's attitude until she was breathless.
As we walked back through the lobby, I said, "Was Zed in there at the time of Kristina's death?"
"Oh, yes. He was working on his tablets. I was using one of them to send a few emails for him."
I exchanged a look with Alex.
"Did you see what he was doing?" my sergeant asked.
"He was working on the finances."
"But did you see that?"
She stopped by the automatic doors. "Well...no. But that's what he was doing." She gestured towards the exit, her expression sharpening. "I hope this visit was helpful. Have a good day."
She stayed there, watching us until we'd walked out.
"What a strange arrangement," I said as we stopped beside the building. "Neither the boss nor the personal assistant seem to like each other -- although Mary still falls over herself to please him. But you'd think someone with as much money as Zed would find it easy to sack her and hire someone more to his taste."
"Maybe he doesn't get along with anyone," Alex replied. "I think there's only room for one ego in his office."
"Hmm." I cracked a smile, but it fell quickly. "Then there are these alibis. You can hack into a robot from anywhere as long as you have a tablet or a tabphone, right?"
"Yes. But Ronan divorced Kristina five years ago, and Zed broke up with her five years before that."
"So why would they kill her now?" I finished, dragging a hand through my hair. "Argh... Let's go and puzzle this over at the station. Maybe then we'll get some better ideas."