“Did you bribe him?”

“Sure. I mean, something. I can’t remember how much.”

“Why not? I mean, that’s how you got it in the first place, right? Why even bother?”

A long silence. AQD vehicle passes are generally advertised as for businesses with a few more employees than Khurusch’s sketchy concern, but it is not uncommon for small traders to help their applications with a few dollars—Besźmarques being unlikely to move the Besź middlemen or issuing clerks at the Ul Qoman embassy.

“In case,” he said hopelessly, “I ever needed help picking stuff up. My nephew’s done the test, couple of mates, could’ve driven it, helped me out. You never know.”

“Inspector?” Corwi was looking at me. She’d said it more than once, I realised. “Inspector?” She glanced at Khurusch, What are we doing?

“Sorry,” I said to her. “Just thinking.” I motioned her to follow me to the corner of the room, warning Khurusch with a pointed finger to stay put.

“I’m going to take him in,” I said quietly, “but something’s … Look at him. I’m trying to work something out. Look, I want you to chase something up. As quick as you can, because tomorrow I’m going to have to go to this damn orientation, so I think tonight’s going to be a long night. Are you okay with that? What I want is a list of all the vans reported stolen in Besźel that night, and I want to know what happened in each case.”

“All  of them …?”

“Don’t panic. It’ll be a lot for all vehicles, but factor out everything but vans round about this size, and it’s only for one night. Bring me everything you can on each of them. Including all paperwork associated, okay? Quick as possible.”

“What are you going to do?”

“See if I can make this sleazy sod tell the truth.”

COEWI, through cajoling, persuasion and computer expertise, got hold of the information within a few hours. To be able to do that, so quickly, to speed up official channels, is voodoo.

For the first couple of hours as she went through things, I sat with Khurusch in a cell, and asked him in various ways and in several different formulations Who took your van?  and Who took your pass?  He whined and demanded his lawyer, which I told him he would have soon. Twice he tried getting angry, but mostly he just repeated that he did not know, and that he had not reported the thefts, of van and papers, because he had been afraid of the trouble he would bring on himself. “Especially because they already warned me on that, you know?”

It was after the end of the working day when Corwi and I sat together in my office to work through it. It would be, as I warned her again, a long night.

“What’s Khurusch being held for?”

“At this stage Inappropriate Pass Storage and Failure to Report Crime. Depending on what we find tonight I might add Conspiracy to Murder, but I have a feeling—”

“You don’t think he’s in on whatever, do you?”

“He’s hardly a criminal genius, is he?”

“I’m not suggesting he planned anything, boss. Maybe even that he knew about anything. Specific. But you don’t think he knew who took his van? Or that they were going to do something?”

I wagged my head. “You didn’t see him.” I pulled the tape of his interrogations out of my pocket. “Take a listen if we have a bit of time.”

She drove my computer, pulling the information she had into various spreadsheets. She translated my muttered, vague ideas into charts. “This is called data mining.”  She said the last words in English.

“Which of us is the canary?” I said. She did not answer. She only typed and drank thick coffee, “made fucking properly,” and muttered complaints about my software.

“So this is what we have.” It was past two. I kept looking out of my office window at the Besźel night. Corwi smoothed out the papers she had printed. Beyond the window were the faint hoots and quietened mutter of late traffic. I moved in my chair, needing a piss from caffeinated soda.

“Total number of vans reported stolen that night, thirteen.” She scanned through with her fingertip. “Of which three then turn up burnt out or vandalised in some form or other.”

“Joyriders.”

“Joyriders, yes. So ten.”

“How long before they were reported?”

“All but three, including the charmer in the cells, reported by the end of the following day.”

“Okay. Now where’s the one where you have … How many of these vans have Ul Qoma pass papers?”

She sifted. “Three.”

“That sounds high—three out of thirteen?”

“There are going to be way more for vans than for vehicles as a whole, because of all the import-export stuff.”

“Still though. What are the statistics for the cities as a whole?”

“What, of vans with passes? I can’t find it,” she said after a while of typing and staring at the screen. “I’m sure there must be a way to find out, but I can’t figure out a way to do it.”

“Okay, if we have time we’ll chase that. But I’m betting it’s less than three out of thirteen.”

“You could … It does sound high.”

“Alright, try this. Of those three with passes that got stolen, how many owners have previous warnings for condition-transgressions?”

She looked through papers and then at me. “All three of them. Shit. All three for inappropriate storage. Shit.”

“Right. That does sound unlikely, right? Statistically. What happened to the other two?”

“They were … Hold on. Belonged to Gorje Feder and Salya Ann Mahmud. Vans turned up the next morning. Dumped.”

“Anything taken?”

“Smashed up a bit, a few tapes, bit of change from Feder’s, an iPod from Mahmud’s.”

“Let me look at the times—there’s no way of proving which of these were stolen first, is there? Do we know if these other two still have their passes?”

“Never came up, but we could find out tomorrow.”

“Do if you can. But I’m going to bet they do. Where were the vans taken from?”

“Juslavsja, Brov Prosz, and Khurusch’s from Mashlin.”

“Where were they found?”

“Feder’s in … Brov Prosz. Jesus. Mahmud’s in Mashlin. Shit. Just off ProspekStrász.”

“That’s about four streets from Khurusch’s office.”

“Shit.” She sat back. “Talk this out, boss.”

“Of the three vans that get stolen that night that have visas, all have records for failing to take their paperwork out of their glove compartments.”

“The thief knew?”

“Someone was visa-hunting. Someone with access to border-control records. They needed a vehicle they could get through Copula. They knew exactly who had form for not bothering to take their papers with them. Look at the positions.” I scribbled a crude map of Besźel. “Feder’s is taken first, but good on Mr. Feder, he and his staff have learnt their lesson, and he takes his paperwork with him now. When they realise that our criminals use it instead to drive here , to near where Mahmud parks hers. They jack it, fast, but Ms. Mahmud keeps her pass in the office now too, so after having made it look like a robbery, they dump it near the next  in the list and move on.”

“And the next one’s Khurusch’s.”

“And he’s remained true to his previous tendency, and leaves his in the van. So they’ve got what they need, and it’s off to Copula Hall, and Ul Qoma.” Quiet.

“What the fuck is this?”

“It’s… looking dodgy, is what it is. It’s a very inside job. Inside what, I don’t know. Someone with access to arrest records.”

“What the fuck do we do? What do we do?” she said again after I was quiet too long.

“I don’t know.”

“We need to tell someone …”

“Who? Tell them what? We don’t have anything.”

“Are you …” She was about to say joking , but she was intelligent enough to see the truth of it.

“Correlations might be enough for us, but it’s not evidence, you know—not enough to do anything with.” We stared at each other. “Anyway … whatever this is … whoever …” I looked at the papers.