"You were good in there," Alex said softly. "Really good."
I kept my eyes fixed on the door to Mary's office.
"Amber, no bystander could have done better than that. You knew exactly what you were doing. It was amazing."
I glanced at him, standing there calmly, not a speck on his suit. My jumper was unwearable, so I was left with my tank top and leather jacket. I was going to freeze once we were outside, and I kept thinking about that. Absently.
The door to the office flew open, and Cassia emerged. Strands of platinum hair had come loose from her ponytail and were falling into her eyes. Behind her, someone caught the door before it could shut again. I saw PRBs putting Zed in a body bag.
"Well?" I asked as my sister stopped in front of us.
"There's not a lot I can tell you right now that you don't already know. He was shot in the chest with a pistol and it killed him."
"Did I miss anything? Was I too slow?"
"You did everything right, Ambie." She squeezed my shoulder. "I think he was a goner the moment he was hit. I'll try to call you after the post-mortem."
The PRBs wheeled the body bag out of the office on a trolley. Cassia followed it.
I took a deep breath and turned away to survey the rest of the scene. Mary was sitting on the steps in front of the desk, crying while a paramedic checked her over. A blanket was around her shoulders, and DC Laney was consoling her.
"Interview time," I said. "I want to know what the hell we just walked into."
We crossed the lobby to the steps. A stern glance at Laney and the paramedic sent them away, and I sat down on one side of Mary. Alex sat down on the other. She pulled the blanket tight and shivered, watching the doors close behind the body bag.
"Mary," I said gently. "We need to know what happened."
She sat still for a long moment. Then she whispered, "It was them."
"Who?" Alex asked.
"The same person who killed Kristina. The robot shot him."
"What robot? One of yours?"
"Yes, but it's gone now. Mr Croft..." She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. "He'd come into my office, and it saw him through the glass... It came in and shot him. It kept saying his name. And then it said that h-he'd been bad?"
Alex and I exchanged a grim look.
"What was Zed doing in your office?" I asked.
"He came to check I'd sent those emails I told you I was doing earlier. At least, that's as far as he got. I don't know if he came in for anything else..." Her eyes filled as she opened them.
"What did you think of him?"
She stared at me. "Think of him?"
"Did you think he was a nice man?" I watched her closely. "Or maybe the kind to make enemies?"
"Oh," she whispered. "I don't -- I didn't like him much, but I would never h-have wished t-that..." She covered her face and sobbed.
Alex dug around in his pockets and offered her a packet of tissues. We stayed on the steps for a few minutes, silent, until she'd calmed down again. Then I stood up. "We'll catch this bastard, Mary. I promise."
We crossed to the desk, where the robot receptionist was on duty again. I didn't even have to ask Alex to do the talking for me.
"Show us your CCTV footage," he said.
"I must ask permission from Zed," the robot replied stiffly. Then, after a moment: "There is a connection failure."
"Zed isn't here. He's dead."
"I must ask permission from Zed," the robot repeated.
Alex glanced across the room. "Ask Mary."
The robot followed his gaze and stared at the personal assistant with its bright, eerie eyes. It left the desk and went over.
While we waited, Alex turned to me. "Both witnesses to Ripley's fall have been killed. You don't like coincidences."
"No," I sighed. "At least we know we were right in front of Jasper when it happened, and all the tablets in the office were switched off."
"We need to talk with Ronan."
The robot came back. "You have permission to look at the security footage. It is streamed to Zed's office."
We were shown to Zed's office. The robot unlocked his tablet for us and found the CCTV footage. Alex rewound it to the right place, then pressed play.
On screen, the armed robots were all standing still against the walls like they had been on our first visit. Thirty seconds must have passed before one of them spasmed without warning, and its eyes flared brighter, like Alpha at The Diamond Hotel. Hefting its rifle, it walked across the lobby to Mary's office.
It flung the door open, and a gunshot cracked over the microphone. A woman screamed.
"Is that me?" Mary asked meekly.
I glanced up at her, but I didn't reply until we'd watched the robot turn around and walk right out of the bank. Alex stopped the video.
"I assume so," I said. "Could you answer a few more questions for us, please?"
She crept across the threshold. "I feel sick -- I want to go home..."
"I just want to ask you a few questions about your time at university."
Mary stopped. "My...what does Bright Light have to do with this?"
"A lot." Alex turned his chair around to join mine. "You took the same degree as Kristina and Zed. Jasper Jaydes, Ripley Lewis, and Ronan Lewis were also students at the same time as you."
She nodded. "They were all there. But I wasn't friends with them."
"So how did you end up working for Zed?" I asked.
"He had a position open last year, and I applied. I was desperate, which is why I stayed even though he was...well, Zed."
"Is there anything he might have done while he was at university to make enemies? Any scandals you heard of?"
She bit her lip. "Er...no. But there was a scandal afterwards, of course."
My eyebrows rose. "Of course?"
"You didn't know? The idea for this bank was dreamed up by Kristina Nixon and her ex-husband years ago. Mr Croft told me. Ronan was the architect, and it was Kristina's idea to have so much done by the robots. She designed every one, too. Most of them are behind the scenes, of course. Mr Croft and I are the only humans working here, and that makes it the securest bank in Socrico. Robots don't care if someone walks in and holds them at gunpoint." Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard.
But it seems robots do shoot people.
"He said that Kristina heard he was setting up a bank, and she made the executive decision to sell the plans to him. Ronan was furious. The idea had been his baby." She looked down and fiddled with the hem of her skirt. "I always thought that must have been why they divorced."
"Bloody hell," I said. "Yes, it probably would be."
***
Alex copied the CCTV footage to our tabphones, and then we took off to Ronan's flat. His doorbell informed us that he wasn't in.
We couldn't get through to him by making an Xplora call, either. We even tried tracking him, but his battery must have been drained, because there was no transmission, blocked or otherwise. Tabphones can be tracked even when they're switched off, but not if the battery is dead.
In the end, we went back to the station.
"You know what strikes me as strange?" I said in our office. "We asked Mary if she'd heard of any scandals involving Zed while she was at university, and she said no. She didn't breathe a word about him witnessing Ripley's suicide. What about all the rumours afterwards?"
"They were about Kristina," Alex said. "Not Zed."
"I still think it should have come to mind." I sat down behind my desk. "Review the CCTV footage and see if there's an identification number on that robot. Once you've tracked it, get out of here and seize it."
"All right."
I had a few of my own tasks on my hands now, the first of which involved trying to contact Zed's estranged family. They lived in New London, like a large percentage of the population, and had already been informed of their son's death by the local police. They weren't particularly interested in talking to me, and they didn't have anything useful to say either.
I was writing about this unhelpfulness in my report when Alex suddenly stood up. "Got the robot. It's idling a few blocks away. I'll fetch it."
He left. I gave up on my work a few minutes later and went to find Dixon. He wasn't in his office, so I wandered around the station, glancing into the glass cubes.
When I reached Sebastian's office, I saw the homicide inspector and his sergeant, Otto Gibbs, at their desks. Sebastian was twirling his vape between his fingers, probably wishing he could use it. Dixon was standing a few paces inside with his back to the door.
I pulled it open and stuck my head in. "Am I missing a party?"
"I wish," Sebastian said.
Dixon turned around. "Do you need something, Amber?"
"Yes, sir. I want to know if the station still has the evidence that was gathered for the inquest of Ripley Lewis -- she committed suicide in 2176. I'm specifically looking for a diary."
Dixon frowned. "Two people have been murdered today, and you want to examine a suicide from ten years ago?"
"Yes, sir."
Sebastian grinned. "I'm sure she has a reason."
"I should hope so. Wait in your office, and I'll see what I can do for you. But I expect to see you working on the current murders when I come in."
I went back to my office. The rear wall of our little cube was made of touchglass -- interactive glass like the material used for the public divider at the front of the station. It essentially turned the whole office into a giant tablet, and it was the one piece of technology I enjoyed working with. There was no better way to organise information than creating a huge mind map of case notes on the wall.
I woke the touchglass up and gathered the national profile pictures of our victims and all the people who were linked with them. Then I put together the bare bones of a diagram with crossing lines and brief notes. In the space of twenty-four hours, two people had been brutally murdered -- and too many people for comfort were linked with them both.
Kristina Nixon: deceased. Zed Croft: deceased.
Ripley Lewis. Old university friend of Kristina. Old university friend of Zed. Both witnessed her suicide in 2176. Sister of Ronan Lewis. Cousin of Jasper Jaydes.
Ronan Lewis. Kristina's ex-husband and old university friend. Divorced because she sold bank plans to Zed? Old university friend of Zed. Brother of Ripley Lewis. Cousin of Jasper Jaydes.
Jasper Jaydes. Kristina's boss. Old university friend of Kristina. Old university friend of Zed. Cousin of Ripley Lewis and Ronan Lewis.
Mary Daniels. Took same degree (robotic science) as Kristina and Zed. Zed's personal assistant.
Professors spoken to: Lars Stephenson, Minerva West.
The office door swung open behind me. Dixon came in and put a zip-lock bag containing an old tablet on my desk. "This belonged to Ripley Lewis. According to the case report, it's where she kept the diary you want."
"Thank you, sir." I sat down and slid it out of the bag. "I haven't seen a model like this in forever."
"Where's Alex?"
"Detaining and examining the robot that shot Zed this afternoon."
"So you are working on today's murders."
"Yes, sir."
He strode over to the touchglass wall and frowned at my notes. A minute passed while he read them. "This Ronan Lewis looks like he has a strong motive."
"Yes, sir, but we can't track him. His battery's dead."
"Keep trying."
I sighed. "Yes, sir."
***
Alex came back a while later with the result I'd been expecting -- he'd found the robot and examined it, but the hacker had left no trace of their online identity.
Unexpectedly, the rifle it had shot Zed with had gone missing. This seemed to set the tone for the rest of the afternoon, as we made no further progress.
When five o'clock came, Alex plucked Ripley's tablet off my charging pad and tucked it under his arm. I looked between him and it. "I am still coming over tonight, aren't I?" Despite everything, a wedge of disappointment lodged itself in my stomach at the thought that he might have forgotten.
He smiled, his features softening. "Yes. But perhaps we should go our separate ways for now."
"How about I go home and get changed, and I'll come around in an hour?"
"Great." His smile grew. "I'll see you there."
Feeling guilty about our arrangement, I let him leave first. Relationships between superiors and subordinates had a prison sentence attached, and I'd broken the law on New Year's Eve by kissing him. What I was about to do now was not a lot better.
But it's to stop it from happening again.
I left the station five minutes later. It was already dark, and I strode quickly up the lane before turning onto the high street. A tram shot past, splashing through a puddle from the previous day's rain. The rails meant there was less room for pedestrians, and I was jostled and bashed as I weaved between them. I fought through the crowd until I reached the turning for a quieter road with no tram rails running down it. There, I stuck to the shadows, thinking of Alex.
When I reached my block of flats, my thoughts drifted to his stay in Rosek. And Rosek in general. My old sergeant, Nina Howell, was still working there with her new title as a detective inspector. I still missed her.
I rode the lift up to my floor. Maybe I'd have time to call her once I'd showered and changed. We'd finally settled into the routine of having a catch-up every week since the New Year, and we were due another.
The lift stopped, and the doors opened. I stepped out. Yes, calling Nina would be nice. I could talk to her about this investigation and --
I froze.
Clyde was standing outside my flat, his back to me. His fist was resting against the doorbell.
"I'm sorry, Amber isn't at home right now," the doorbell said. "Would you like to leave a message?"
I turned around and jammed the buttons on the lift. I may have been a cop, and I may have had a gun, but I sure as hell didn't want to be alone with Clyde.
The lift doors creaked open. I winced and glanced over my shoulder.
Clyde turned around. His dark eyes glinted. "Hello, Amber. You weren't going somewhere, were you?"