We entered the world of darkness and green holograms that was Ryker's Repairs without knocking. When my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I saw Ryker James sitting at the back, watching us with a dismantled tabphone in his hands. He was silent.
"You know," I said eventually.
"I saw an article on Xplora." His voice was gruff. "You've come to talk to me about her."
"Yes," Alex said. "And we'd like to look around the workshop in case there's something belonging to her that could help."
Smooth.
"She had a little workspace, but she spent more time observing than helping." Ryker stood up and came to us, rapping the nearest table. "Here. I don't know if she put anything in the drawers."
Alex snapped on a pair of black nitrile gloves and opened a drawer. At a glance, I saw lipstick, a hair bobble, and a safety pin. Not very helpful.
Something crashed in the back of the workshop. Ryker sighed. "Indium!"
"When did you last see Bryony?" I asked.
"Yesterday, when you took her away."
"Did she seem nervous before that? Afraid?"
"No. She was absolutely fine."
"Did you know that she was taking crimson?"
He looked away, flexing his metal fingers. "I suspected it. But she never kept any here as far as I'm aware."
"For your sake, I hope she didn't. Do the names Kaden Novick or Rex Lukens mean anything to you?"
"No."
"Kaden Novick was her dealer. She was walking to meet Jason Castle-Ackerman so that they could visit him when she was murdered on Kings Road. I have to ask where you were between four and four-thirty this morning."
"At home, asleep." He treated me to a long, hard stare. "And no, no one can testify to that. Like I've said, I live alone."
Alex slammed the second desk drawer shut. "Nothing of interest in there. We'll have to search the whole premises to be sure she hasn't left anything lying around that could help us."
"No." Ryker folded his arms across his chest. "I know how this works. You'll tear the whole place apart and leave me to clear up the mess."
"This is important, sir," I said. "Your employee has just died."
"If it matters to you that much, get a warrant." He turned away. "But you'll be wasting your time. You should be looking at Maxx."
"Your ex-fiancée was murdered mere feet away from your shop," Alex said. "Bryony was your employee."
Ryker glared at my sergeant, hot fury rolling across his face. "You're trying to goad a confession out of me, but it won't work, because I didn't do it. Get out of here."
***
Applying for a warrant to search Ryker's Repairs was the first thing we did when we got back to the station. We applied for one to search his flat too, just to cover all bases. Alex was pleased.
I was pleased when my tabphone rang. Nina was requesting a video call.
"Got him!" were the first words she said when I answered.
Alex pulled his chair over to my desk so that we were sitting side by side, both watching her.
"Rex Lukens?" I confirmed.
"Yeah. He's in an interview room, ready for me to take the tabphone through and get you to chat. That is, if you're okay with me being present, too? It's just that my governor would rather I was, seeing as he's our criminal."
"You know I don't mind," I said. "Take us to him."
Nina stood up and left her office, identical to ours. She carried her tabphone through a glass police station. None of us said anything for a good few minutes until she arrived in the interview room.
She introduced herself to Rex, the camera still facing her, and went through the usual spiel of explanations. Then she finally released her tabphone and turned it in the air so that Rex could see us and we could see Rex.
He was a man about our age, with dark hair and a dark scowl. I talked, while Alex brooded with a similar expression. I imagined that his jaw was killing him again by now, but he'd abandoned the ice pack.
"You dealt with Kaden Novick this morning at 4:09 a.m.," I began. "Near Underworld Eclipse?"
"Yes," Rex spat.
"And you dealt with him on Monday, 8:45 p.m., at Socrico Train Station."
"Yes."
I was surprised that he was playing along. "Do you know Bryony Gold or Zoe Ackerman?"
He sat up straighter, morbid interest lighting his eyes. "I've seen the news about them on Xplora. They've been murdered, right?"
"Please answer my question, Mr Lukens."
"Nah, I didn't know either of them."
I pushed him more, dragging out the specifics about his movements in the hours of the murders and his dealings with Kaden Novick. But he had nothing helpful to say. On top of our non-existent physical evidence, he seemed to be a dead end.
I cleared my throat. "Nina?"
"Who are you getting your supply from?" she asked.
Rex squirmed. Nina said nothing. An uncomfortable minute passed.
"Well, in that case..." Nina pushed her chair back. "Looks like it's just you who'll get the punishment for this. Everyone else will get off scot-free. Lucky them."
She snatched her tabphone out of the air and turned us away.
"Charlie!" Rex said.
Nina turned back. "Full name?"
Once she'd bled enough information from him to put another drug dealer in prison, she finally ended the interview.
"What do you think?" she asked us as she carried her tabphone back to the office.
"You make a great inspector," I said. "Although we haven't seen hide nor hair of your sergeant. Where is he?"
"Doing something else for me." Nina smiled. "Don't worry, I keep him busy. Anyway, you know what I meant. What do you think?"
I exchanged a look with Alex. He shook his head. "I don't think Lukens has anything to do with the murders."
"Neither do I," Nina said, pushing her office door open.
"Neither do I," I added. "So we're just waiting on the warrants for Ryker."
***
We passed the afternoon catching up on our electronic paperwork and conducting a useless video interview with Bryony Gold's parents. Ryker's search warrants finally came through as the day was starting to dim. We sent a team of PRBs to his flat and accompanied another team to his workshop.
When we arrived, he was still sitting at the back of the room. He looked up as we entered and clocked the PRBs with a frown. "So you really do mean to turn my workshop upside down."
I presented him with the warrant. One of the PRBs escorted him outside and stayed there to supervise him. The other two got to work.
We put gloves on and did the same. I started off by going through the drawers of the nearest table that hadn't been Bryony's. Alex followed me and shuffled through what was on the surface.
"First comes murder," he muttered. "Then comes love, then comes marriage...I'm not sure that fits Ryker."
"It fits Maxx." I rummaged through batteries, diagrams, and random nuts and bolts that would probably mean something to Alex but all looked the same to me.
"Yes, so you keep pointing out," he said. "But for Ryker, it's first comes love, then marriage -- well, it was supposed to be marriage. Harley would have been his baby, too. So the rhyme finishes with murder."
"Maybe." I shut the drawers and moved on to the next workspace. Here I found more diagrams and a collection of spanners in dozens of different sizes. Alex looked through diamond drill tips and the tabphone we'd seen Ryker working on earlier. Bored and disappointed, we left the rest of the desks to the PRBs and entered the back room.
It was hardly bigger than a cupboard, but it was lit up crudely with fluorescent bulbs like the dark workshop should have been. The contrast was so extreme that I had to squint. Between my eyelashes, I saw another metal table standing against the back wall, bearing an old kettle, plain ceramic mugs, and a tabphone charging pad. Boxes were stacked around the rest of the space, labelled with pictures of spare gadget parts. Indium the robot was rummaging through one, quite unaware that it was not business as usual in the workshop.
I shuffled further inside and switched half the lights off so that I could see. This action drew the attention of Indium, and it turned around and assessed me with eerie, blue eyes. "Who are you?"
"Detective Inspector Rames, Socrico Police. I've been in a few times."
"Indium," Alex said, "find Ryker."
It glanced around the storeroom as if it hadn't realised he wasn't right there. Then it walked out.
"That might occupy it for a while," I mused. "Do you think it'll realise Ryker's outside?"
Alex grinned. "Probably not. We'd better get on with this before it has a breakdown."
I went to the box Indium had been looking through, filled with tiny coils resting on strips of tissue paper as packaging protection. I plunged my hands in and extracted the coils in one fist. Then I rummaged around in the paper, feeling if there was anything hidden underneath.
Nothing.
"Amber," Alex said.
I turned around.
He'd pulled open the table drawers. Inside them was a knife.