Since his emotional engine was inhibited, Harold wasn’t surprised. But yes—things had just gotten a lot more complicated.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Hansa gulped behind him. “Why…? Suppressants can’t kill people…”
“Oh, crap, what do we do now? Right. First, we call an ambulance…” Gardener went pale and lowered his gun before turning to Harold. “I’ll ring them up, so make sure to leave the room’s furnishings untouched. No disturbing the crime scene.”
“Understood.”
Gardener turned his back to Harold and made an emergency call using his Your Forma. The old woman looked frightened, apparently having seen the state of the apartment from her position by the door, and she started chattering in panicked Sami. Bigga tried to calm her and walked her away from the entrance.
“It’s not my fault,” Hansa said over and over. “Suppressants don’t have these kinds of side effects…”
Ignoring the boy’s claims, Harold approached Banfield’s body. He looked significantly more emaciated than he did in the picture in his personal data, and he had more gray hairs, too. Lying next to him was a single lens reflex camera. Its lens was broken from impacting with the floor, and its film had popped out. Glancing at the window, he noted it was slightly ajar. Did he collapse after taking a photo of the lake?
He knelt near the body and observed its state carefully again. Banfield’s eyelids were half-open, but his clothes were undisturbed, implying that there were no signs of assault. No visible signs of him being affected by narcotics or poison, either.
Harold touched the body and noted that rigor mortis had progressed as far as Banfield’s lower half. That meant eight hours or so had passed since his death, but his body temperature was surprisingly high. The internal sensors in Harold’s skin showed that he had a consistent temperature of thirty-four degrees Celsius. Normally, corpses chilled to twenty-four degrees or so by this point…
Banfield’s personal data did not have any records of chronic illness. Which meant…
“—Stop, Harold.” He looked up, finding Gardener there again, having finished the call. “I told you not to disturb the crime scene. We need to wait for instructions from Chief Totoki.”
“This doesn’t look like homicide. Hansa, was Banfield sick?”
“Huh?” Hansa looked confused, forgetting his antipathy toward Amicus. “No, I took his temperature before administering the suppressant, but it was normal. Maybe he came down with something later…”
“Given his unusual temperature right now, he might have had a fever when he died. It looks like a severe infection.”
But even if he had died of illness, the timing was clearly suspicious. Would a sick person open the window to take photographs of the lake when it was bitingly cold outside?
“Look, I’ve heard you’re very smart, but you need to follow orders.” Gardener was visibly confused. “We shouldn’t make any conclusions about his cause of death until forensics inspects him.”
“Yes, of course.” Harold nodded and retracted his hand from the body. “But we should probably take samples as soon as possible. Depending on what infection this is, traces of the virus might disappear before the autopsy is performed.”
“Hansa, do you have a sampling kit? Could you lend it to me?”
Bigga entered the room after escorting the old woman away. She must have heard their exchange on the way here. She pointed at Hansa’s shoulder bag.
Bio-hackers often acted as back-alley doctors and would carry many different tool kits with them. This was something Harold had learned from his interactions with Bigga during the time of the sensory crime incident—but he knew that an Amicus asking Hansa for them wouldn’t be as convincing as having the girl he fancied do it.
“I do, but…” Hansa hesitated, taking out a sampling kit in a vinyl bag. “This isn’t an approved kit, so I doubt it’ll last long. It’ll need to be placed in cooling at the very least.”
“Our transport drones have a model with a cooling system.” Gardener operated his Your Forma. “Our closest factory with a production line should be…in Rovaniemi.”
Harold checked the map with his wearable terminal. Rovaniemi was a coexistence zone that was a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Enontekiö. A transport drone moving along the airways could probably get to them faster than that, but that wasn’t the problem.
“Factory?” Bigga blinked. “Are you considering asking a production factory to supply a drone directly to us? That sounds a bit far-fetched…”
“They’ll do it if we ask,” Gardener said casually. “My father runs a drone development corporation that provides surveillance drones to investigation agencies… Have you heard of an English company called Robin Flutter?”
Harold was familiar with the Robin Flutter brand—the firm had risen to prominence not only because it supplied drones to primary transport companies, but also because a large number of police organizations worldwide held a significant market share of their drones. This once again explained why the bureau treated Gardener so magnanimously. Favoritism was normally something to be avoided, but it seemed that the bureau had determined that the opportunity to deepen their relationship with him was too good to pass up.
Regardless, in this situation, it was a windfall.
“Investigator Gardener, please ask Chief Totoki for permission to use a transport drone for this.”
“Hold on, I need to contact the factory and check first. I just hope someone’s there to take the call…”
As Gardener operated his Your Forma, Harold unsealed the sampling kit. It was imperative that he take a sample from Banfield’s corpse as soon as possible. But just as he was about to do that—
<Incoming message/Ui Totoki>
His wearable terminal got a notification. Harold paused, and Investigator Gardener and Bigga both looked up at the same time. Both had received a similar message via their Your Formas. Harold opened the holo-browser.
<Special Investigations Unit members of all bureaus are to join an emergency online meeting at 7 PM UTC. Attendance is mandatory>
The outlook had just turned even more grim.