One Life Remaining (A Science Fiction Thriller) (Portal Book 2)

CHAPTER ONE

A wicked North Sea gust caught the shipping container’s edge and sent it rocking. Suspended in a glass cabin overhead, the crane operator arrested the undulating load. When the flurry passed he swung the container landward and eased it onto the quay. Twistlocks spun with a grinding whirr. The detached spreader shot back up and across to the waiting cargo ship.

Twenty-five miles west of the Port of Tilbury, Detective Inspector Louisa Bennett monitored the unloading on the incident room’s wall screen. Three cranes were working on the ship, and beneath each cabin hung a spinner, gripping the metal frame with bird-like claws. Each surveillance device was a little larger than a golf ball and their retracted wings hugged a bulbous body from which dangled quivering fronds of sense strips and micro cameras. Five more spinners fluttered aloft, circling the port, maintaining a perimeter vigil. They were barely maintaining their altitude in the gale force winds blasting up the Thames Estuary. Although the absence of a local Portal network rendered their sense strips useless, the micro cameras were gyro-stabilised, so their buffeting wasn’t reflected in the gently swaying imagery.

From the vantage point of a circling spinner Louisa watched a canary-yellow straddle carrier dart toward the container. Tall and spindly, with a lean box-frame, the ungainly looking vehicle was deceptively agile. Its driver slid over the container and latched on with a wrenching clunk, before lifting it into the straddler’s belly and whisking it away.

‘How much longer do you think?’ Louisa directed the question at David Coates. The SIU officer reclined at a console littered with chocolate and crisp wrappers. His chalk-white legs sprouted from khaki shorts, with flip-flop shod feet balancing either side of the console’s pedestal.

‘Soon,’ Coates replied, around a mouthful of crisps. ‘The Majestueus shipping manifest lists the order the containers were signed off at Rotterdam for stacking. It doesn’t specify the loading sequence. Our container was among the last third to arrive.’

Coates dug out another crisp. He had a habit of loudly sucking the flavour from each morsel before chewing it with his mouth open. He appeared oblivious to Detective Sergeant Sloan’s discomfort across the aisle. With each loud crunch Sloan’s back hunched further. No doubt she would have preferred it if Coates had remained back in The Cave. The petite detective was one of her best officers, but bad eating habits really pushed her buttons. She was moments from biting off Coates’ head.

‘Sloan, check in with the two cars,’ Louisa said.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Sloan rolled her shoulders and requested an operation-wide status update.

DC Allen responded first. His location pulsed on the wall screen. He and DC Jenkins were stationed at Tilbury in a staff car park. It offered them a clear view of the loading zone where a long queue of flatbed trucks waited. DS Bolton checked in shortly after. He and DC Hargreaves were parked ten miles to the North, across the road from a warehouse on the outskirts of Basildon.

‘Boss.’ Coats disentangled his feet from the pedestal. ‘This looks like our box.’

Coates took a snapshot as the container descended onto the dock. There was an ID stencilled on top. ‘X, T, S, A, 129, 456, 2.’ He checked it against the manifest. ‘That’s it. The container leased to Worrell Wholesale Limited.’

The crane’s spreader released the container and a straddle carrier zoomed toward it.

‘Get a spinner over that vehicle,’ Louisa said.

‘On it,’ Coates replied.

Coates left the three spinners attached to the crane cabs in place and signalled another circling overhead. The spinner camera centered on the straddle carrier as it trundled between walls of stacked containers.

‘It’s heading for the truck stop,’ Coates said. ‘They’re backed up so it’ll be a few minutes before it’s loaded.’

Louisa breathed a sigh of relief. She’d feared the container might languish for days in storage. Behind her, the incident room opened. She twisted around. DCI Lenihan entered. He met her look with a terse nod. Louisa stood, curious now to find out what had dragged him from his bed. She’d given him a status update around nine before he headed home. He wasn’t due in until the morning. Another man followed him into the room and solved the riddle for her.

With his dark Mediterranean features Drew Carter looked much younger than his thirty-five years. His olive skin imparted a year-round healthy glow. Her own complexion would only achieve its like after two solid weeks in the sun. Drew’s role as the National Crime Agency’s Liaison Officer had been created to serve as a bridge between the NCA and the MET. Forming a partnership, facilitating the pooling of resources and intelligence, according to the Home Secretary. Drew was a regular in the SCD7 office, even though they’d never worked together. His role gave him the right to stick his nose into any MET case file, and even assume control or shut it down if he decided the case impacted on an ongoing NCA investigation. The very idea made Louisa’s hackles rise. She’d put weeks of work into this operation. The NCA sure as hell wasn’t going to swoop in and take over.

Drew bounced down the steps with none of the sluggishness Louisa herself felt. The DCI followed, albeit gingerly, favouring his right leg. The injury he’d received from Ouza, Victor Korehkov’s assassin, still gave him pain, even after physiotherapy. She’d never heard him voice a single complaint though, and he hated anyone bringing it up.

‘Inspector, have you met Officer Carter before?’ the DCI gestured toward Drew.

‘No, sir. I don’t believe so.’ She shook Drew’s hand. He smelled shower-fresh. An alien scent in the hot and stuffy room. She endeavoured to maintain her guardedness when he flashed her a smile. She had no doubt the handsome liaison officer could strike up an innocent conversation and within minutes have you confessing your deepest and darkest secrets.

Drew looked around the incident room. ‘I haven’t been in one of these for a while.’

He didn’t appear to be poking fun at her, but Louisa bristled all the same. Most officers in SCD7 regarded her continued use of the incident rooms as old fashioned. MET operations these days were coordinated in a virtual space, the participants jacking in using implants. ‘How can I help you, Drew?’

If she’d offended him by omitting the honorific, he hid it well. Drew didn’t have a police rank, although the NCA had the authority to assign one to their officers. Drew’s was Inspector, or it had been the last time she checked. She’d be damned if she would call him sir.

‘I’ve requested oversight on your operation, which DCI Lenihan kindly authorised. Perhaps you could give me a rundown of your progress to date?’

The NCA Liaison turns up in the middle of an operation at three in the morning and asks to observe? Louisa glanced at the DCI. He nodded, then squinted and rubbed his right eye, which had begun to twitch. DCI Lenihan never lost his cool, but she knew her boss; his barely suppressed fury manifested in the pulsing tic.

‘Three years ago the street price of class A’s, and trance in particular, went through the roof,’ Louisa said.

‘The rise was due to Victor Korehkov’s arrest, wasn’t it?’ Drew asked.

‘Correct. ‘We estimate Korehkov’s supply lines from Eastern Europe provided three quarters of the trance on London’s streets. In the years following his arrest the price has dipped as new dealers emerged to take advantage of the scarcity, but they never fell to the levels last seen when Korehkov was dealing. Until three months ago, that is.’

Louisa tapped on her console screen and a young man’s Portal ID showed on the wall. In his profile picture Gareth Marsh sported a neat goatee and a wide grin, his arm around a young blonde woman in her early twenties wearing a zebra-striped bikini. His girlfriend, according to the profile. The scan had been taken on the beach in Blackpool, the pier visible in the background. Louisa opened another picture, a police mug shot. This time the man’s eyes were glazed and heavy-lidded. A purple tinge coated his goatee and upper lip. ‘Marsh was stopped by a routine traffic patrol for driving manually.’

Drew leaned forward and squinted at the mug shot. ‘Is that trance on his face?’

Louisa nodded. ‘Do you see the arm behind him in the scan? That’s the custody officer, holding him up. Marsh was off his face when they brought him in. The officers found fifty grand worth of trance in his boot.’

‘Did he give up his supplier?’

Louisa shook her head. ‘Once he sobered up he lawyered up. From then on he kept his mouth shut. Upon being cautioned at the scene, however, he professed an admiration for the first class Latvian gear he’d taken, before offering a vial to the arresting officer.’

Drew pursed his lips. ‘Latvian? Is Korehkov coordinating operations from prison?’

‘We don’t believe so. The majority of Korehkov’s gang was implicated along with him, and are currently serving time, but several of his lower level associates avoided custodial sentences. We’ve been monitoring them on the sense logs. Unsurprisingly most of them are still dealing, however they’re at the smaller end of the scale. Certainly none of them look to be making a big enough impact on the market to affect prices across the city.’ Louisa tapped the console screen. Another profile opened. ‘Then we came across Arthur Fletcher.’

A close-shaved square block, the forty-two year old’s head nestled between muscled shoulders. A black tribal tattoo snaked above the collar line of Fletcher’s white shirt, up one side of his neck, around the ear, and ended in a jagged barb at his temple. Several stills taken from sense logs were included in his case file.

‘Nice car.’ Drew nodded at a scan of Fletcher climbing out of a black Mercedes S-Class. ‘I assume you’re about to tell me how he can afford it?’

‘I would if I could. The truth is, we’ve no idea. We can’t find any evidence of criminal activity in his sense logs.’

‘But you think he’s your man?’

‘We do. SIU noticed a pattern in his movements. Once a month, Fletcher heads east, crossing the M25 where it joins the A13. Around four hours later he returns. Last night he made the same trip.’

‘And you followed him?’

Louisa nodded. ‘He’s in a public car park at Tilbury Port.’ She gestured toward spinner camera footage on the wall screen showing Fletcher’s Mercedes. ‘A cargo ship, the Majestueus, has just unloaded a container. We believe his monthly supply of trance is inside.’

‘There’s another man listed in your case file.’ Drew nodded at the view screen. ‘Stephen Worrell. Where does he fit into this?’

‘Portal’s London boundary is the M25.’ Louisa tapped on a console screen and the map zoomed out. A red line followed the wavy contours of the motorway, enclosing the city with a rough circle forty-five miles in diameter. ‘Each time Fletcher crossed it we lost him on the sense logs. The last time he made the trip a CCTV camera at Tilbury spotted him tailing a truck. We ID’d the truck’s container. It was shipped from Rotterdam by a wholesale building contracting company owned by Stephen Worrell. Once a week Worrell receives a shipment of construction equipment from a German firm. We cross-referenced Worrell’s previous shipments with Fletcher’s excursions outside London. Each time Worrell received a shipment on the same night.’

‘Where did the containers end up?’

Louisa zoomed into a location on the outskirts of Basildon, east of the M25 on the North side of the Thames. ‘Every truck is fitted with a transponder which hauliers use to track their vehicles. We requested access to the geo-location server from the company Worrell uses. Last month it stopped for over an hour at Worrell’s warehouse in an industrial estate, then returned to the depot. Worrell’s there right now, waiting for his delivery.’

‘You believe Worrell and Fletcher are working together?’

‘Worrell’s a legitimate businessman with a clean record. Nothing to indicate he’s involved with any illegality. He’s the perfect cover for Fletcher. DS Bolton is at the warehouse now. We’ve deployed roaches at the scene to spray out an inert sense grid in preparation for the container’s arrival. Once the contents are unloaded, we’ll intervene.’

Drew had been nodding along, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off the man’s photo.

‘Now, if I may ask,’ Louisa said, ‘what’s the NCA’s interest in Stephen Worrell?’

Drew shrugged. ‘He’s part of an ongoing NCA investigation.’

Louisa seethed at the man’s casual dismissal. She’d laid her investigation bare, and Drew was holding back.

DCI Lenihan cleared his throat. ‘If you have any information pertaining to this operation, I’d like to hear it.’

‘I understand your position, Chief Inspector,’ Drew replied, ‘but the NCA operation that provided this intelligence is classified.’ He raised his hand as the DCI’s face darkened. ‘I am permitted to tell you, however, that Stephen Worrell came to our attention when he tripped a number of selectors we have in play.’

Selectors were keywords, like bomb, or hijack—used to highlight potential illegal or subversive activity amongst users of a monitored service. The British intelligence agencies had utilised selector monitoring for decades, even back when telephony was the main form of communication. Over the years, details on mass surveillance programs like Tempora had leaked, where GCHQ had tapped the fibre optic backbone of the Global Web to monitor traffic. Louisa suspected the leaks were the tip of a very large iceberg. Still, she would never have expected the NCA to be so forthcoming. ‘On what medium were the selectors observed?’ she asked.

Drew paused before answering. ‘Multiverse.’

It took a moment for Louisa to respond. ‘The Portal game? Seriously? You think monitoring conversations in a game can yield positive leads?’

‘In our experience we’ve found fully immersive entertainment franchises to be a selector-rich environment.’

I bet you have. Huge numbers of mods on Multiverse were shooters: soldiers versus terrorists; soldiers versus aliens. Organised crime mods were equally popular. Louisa couldn’t imagine selectors from Multiverse’s communications triggering anything of use.

‘The selector Worrell tripped must have been important to get you out of bed at this hour,’ Louisa said.

Drew didn’t take the bait. He just stood there, smiling.

‘Boss,’ Coates said, ‘our container is up next.’

The straddler approached a waiting flatbed truck. It slowed down to a crawl and eased over the other vehicle before lowering its load. The truck shuddered as the container transferred. Once the straddler retreated to a safe distance a worker in a fluorescent yellow vest waved the truck forward.

‘Allen? The driver?’ Louisa asked.

A video feed from Allen appeared. He zoomed the camera in on the flatbed’s cab.

‘Ulvis Dukurs,’ Sloan said. ‘A Latvian national. He—’ Sloan went quiet. A CADET warning had flashed up. Dukurs had form. He used to work for Victor Korehkov.

Drew crossed his arms. ‘Interesting.’

‘Okay, let’s keep three spinners on the truck,’ Louisa said, ignoring Drew. She hadn’t have time to think through the possible implications of the driver’s involvement with Korehkov. They needed redundancy on the truck’s surveillance. Spinners were fragile, and it wasn’t unknown for them to malfunction, or get fried by a power line. ‘Keep one on Fletcher and the rest in a half-mile perimeter.’

Coates tapped out the instructions on his console screen.

‘Sloan,’ Louisa turned to the female detective, ‘has Fletcher budged yet?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Let me know the moment he does, and ping Essex police. Let them know we’re on the move. I don’t want any locals stopping that truck. Allen?’

‘Ma’am?’ Allen’s face appeared on the wall screen.

‘Don’t move until Fletcher is clear. And make damn sure you keep your distance from him.’

Louisa relaxed only a fraction as the spinners anchored themselves over the truck and Fletcher’s parked car. The devices had a top airspeed of forty miles per hour. If they lost the two vehicles, she’d need Allen to keep tabs on Fletcher. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Even though Allen and Jenkins were in an unmarked car, they’d still be conspicuous. At this time of night the only traffic around the docks came from commercial vehicles.

‘Boss,’ Coates said, ‘the truck turned right after leaving the docks.’

Fletcher must have had told the driver to take back roads to Basildon. On the area map the road led south to the Thames Estuary before swinging back in a northeasterly direction. There was little of note along it. Industrial estates. An old fort frequented by tourists or history buffs. And a disused power station.

Fletcher still hadn’t moved. Did he have his own spinner on the truck? Commercial versions of the devices, although expensive, were freely available. Only the MET had CAA clearance to operate the devices in built up areas, but a regulation couldn’t stop people flying them if they wanted.

‘It’s turned off the road,’ Coates said.

Louisa’s gaze snapped up to the spinner footage. ‘Where?’

‘It looks like the entrance to Tilbury Power Station.’

‘Get the rest of the spinners over there.’

Louisa centered the map on the power station. There were two routes leading in. A road from the west, which the truck was driving along. The other came in from the north. A winding track, unkempt and overgrown. She realised straight away they didn’t have enough spinners to monitor the site. It spanned at least two hundred acres.

‘The truck’s parked alongside the main building,’ Coates said. ‘There’s only one other vehicle nearby. A van belonging to a firm who has the site’s security contract. I’ve spotted two men so far, manning the security hut at the gate.’

‘They didn’t stop the truck?’ Louisa asked.

Coates shook his head. ‘Nope, they raised the barrier and let it through. No fuss.’

Louisa bit her bottom lip. If only they had sense footage. They could wind it back, identify any activity in the area, including vehicles coming and going. Instead they were blind. The power station itself comprised one main structure and at least a dozen smaller buildings in its surrounds, and she had no idea what was inside any of them.

‘Do you want me to bring a spinner down for a better look?’ Coates asked.

‘No.’ The spinners didn’t make a lot of noise, but if they were spotted the operation would be blown. ‘Keep them high and circling.’

‘Fletcher’s left the docks,’ DS Sloan said. ‘He’s headed in the same direction as the truck.’ She turned in her seat and looked up at Louisa.

Why had the truck deviated from the route it had taken the previous three trips? According to its transponder the last shipment hadn’t stopped at the power station. She took another look at the map. She only had four SCD7 officers on the ground. Essex police were on standby to assist, but she wanted her own officers to make the arrests.

Four officers might not be enough.

The incident room fell silent. They were all staring at Louisa now. Sloan, Coates, DCI Lenihan, Drew. If she called off the operation she could reconvene in a month’s time. Then she could request extra manpower and spray out the power station with a sense grid. But right now she had the chance to catch Fletcher red-handed with the trance. What if the next time Fletcher wasn’t present at all? And what if this container was a decoy? Fletcher could have another on the Majestueus. One not registered with Worrell’s company. Even if he did, there were four thousand containers left on the ship. A thousand had already unloaded. They had no way of knowing which one it could be. If they arrested Fletcher with an empty container the operation would be blown.

‘Coates,’ Louisa said, ‘get the MIR fired up.’

Drew’s eyebrows quirked. ‘You’re going down there yourself?’

‘I am. Feel free to jack in and monitor our progress.’

‘Oh, no.’ He grinned. ‘I’m coming along too.’

CHAPTER TWO

A newscast anchor once suggested to Adam Walsh that the Portal CTO possessed a sixth sense. A golden touch for predicting users’ needs. Ever self-effacing, Adam laughed off the comment. ‘Everyone has an extra sense now,’ he countered, ‘it’s called Portal.’

Louisa sometimes wondered how Londoners would react if they lost their newfound sense after eight years. Would there be panic? A breakdown in public order?

Louisa didn’t feel panicked, but then her connection to Portal hadn’t been permanently removed, merely temporarily cut off. She could still feel something though. She likened it to thirst—as if she stood before a water cooler, gasping for a drink, and someone had removed the little blue tap. She hadn’t felt this way the last time she left Portal’s network, but back then she didn’t have the implants.

It was a recognised condition. Information Dependency Disorder. Even if most people referred to it as Portal addiction. At least when terminals were Portal’s main interface point the dependency had been easy to diagnose amongst addicts. Now all you had to do was mouth a pre-assigned word or even concentrate on an instruction and a Portal interface would appear in the air before you. Some users only jacked out when they were asleep. They spent every waking moment connected to the network.

Louisa suspected Coates might be a sufferer. His fidgeting first began when they crossed the M25. Now he was a foot-tapping, fingernail-biting bundle of nerves. He stretched out and closed his eyes.

Force of habit, Louisa suspected. With your eyes shut you could immerse yourself fully in whatever extension you were running. A good two miles from a viable Portal connection however, closing your eyes brought nothing but darkness.

Louisa, Sloan, Coates and Drew were all in the SCD7 MIR, or Mobile Incident Room, parked in a truck drivers’ rest stop half a mile from Tilbury Power Station. The converted articulated vehicle had a Portal connection, sourced from a satellite link and hard wired into the three consoles manned by Louisa, Sloan, and Coates. Before them an entire wall of the truck’s interior had been turned into a Portal screen, displaying the case file, spinner footage, and a map of the power station and its immediate surrounds.

If Sloan was affected by Portal withdrawal, the detective wasn’t showing it. Of all of them Louisa worried about Sloan’s attention drifting the least. When Louisa accepted DCI Lenihan’s job offer to head a SCD7 team she’d had a concern about Sloan’s acceptance of her new position. The detective had clearly resented Louisa’s involvement in SCD7’s investigation of the Clothwell Syndicate murders. She needn’t have worried. The detective approached any assigned task with a singular focus. It was the main reason why she’d kept Sloan by her side during the operation. She wanted a dependable set of eyes on the case file and sense footage, especially when her team moved to arrest Fletcher and Worrell.

The thought occurred to Louisa that Sloan might be like her, and rarely used the implants because of implant sensitivity. Louisa’s ocular implants gave her the most trouble. When activated, a warmth formed at the back of her eye sockets. With prolonged usage it seared red-hot, like a heated needle was drilling into her eyeballs. In the medical community a growing consensus was forming that the sensations were psychosomatic. Louisa had quit seeking treatment from her own GP once he asked if she was under a lot of stress at work. She knew her doctor had mentally switched from a diagnosis mode to an it’s-all-in-you-head mode.

She counted herself lucky in a way. Some users experienced much worse symptoms. They ranged from paresthesia, where the skin would prickle or itch, to full-blown formication, where sufferers swore they had insects burrowing under their skin. Most of those poor unfortunates couldn’t stick it for long and ended up having their implants removed. Her own skin crawled at the thought. She forced herself to concentrate on the spinner footage.

Still no movement.

Fletcher had been inside Tilbury Power Station for nearly an hour now. Spinners swirled high above its main building, offering Louisa a bird’s-eye view. The security guards remained at their post. She focussed her attention on the storage depot and its two loading bays. The container truck was backed up tight against one of the bays, its shutters raised. The other set