“Everyone else who knows about the thought manipulation system, like Echika and me, could end up getting thwarted the same way,” Fokine said sardonically. Their teammates could end up changing. “Hieda and Bigga got hauled off to England to check Lloyd’s villa, right?”
“Yes. I imagine they were seen as rocking the boat because they didn’t agree with Totoki’s dismissal.”
Lloyd was the developer of the TOSTI AI and was suspected of being involved with the Alliance. For the longest time, they hadn’t been able to get a search warrant for his villa, despite their call to have it investigated. But as soon as Chief Smith got appointed, they suddenly got the search warrant they’d been asking for.
The timing was simply too good to be true.
“At this point, our only option is to have everyone in the bureau lined up in front of you so you could sniff out who’s in the Alliance, Harold,” Fokine joked, half in desperation. “Your polygraph talents haven’t gone down, right?”
“I can’t do everything. Most importantly, the Alliance’s insiders probably don’t feel like they’re doing anything wrong, so there’s a high probability I won’t be able to read them properly. A similar thing happened with Napolov.”
“But you didn’t say Smith was completely white—completely in the clear.”
“We’re investigators, Ivan.” Harold made a point of referring to him by his first name, so as to bring him back to his senses. “Keep in mind that we need to stay calm as we go on the offensive.”
The first thing they needed to do was go back to their starting point. They still didn’t know the direct cause of death of the Farasha Island investors, with the exception of Banfield. In his case, they’d found out he died due to being infected with a chimeric virus developed as a bioweapon, which they traced back to the TFC. Yet when the Special Investigations Unit had had gone to Al Bahah, the supposed location of the manufacturing plant, they’d failed to find any evidence that the TFC was producing biological weapons. But that could be explained by the base being well hidden and the Special Investigations Unit failing to locate it.
Even so, they needed a change in perspective.
“Go on the offensive?” Fokine crushed the empty paper cup in his hand and dropped it in the trash can. “We’ve been trying to investigate this whole time. What other options do we have?”
“I’m not sure if it’ll make for a breakthrough, but there’s still one place we haven’t checked.”
Fokine raised his brows. “Where?”
If this hunch turned out to be off the mark, too, Harold might be ready to throw in the towel.
“Investigator Fokine, I’m going to need a human to chaperone me there. Are you still busy with your phone calls?”
“Even if I was really busy with it, I’d still say it was boring me half to death.” Fokine threw a reckless smile his way.
Harold smiled back. It felt like it had been a long time since he was able to do that, perhaps since he started inhibiting his emotional engine.
“So where will I be chaperoning you?”
Harold glanced at the corridor and whispered to Fokine in reply.
“The refrigerator.”
Paul Samuel Lloyd’s villa was in a quiet residential neighborhood in Oxford, England.
“Bigga, are you sure this Lloyd guy is the one who developed the TOSTI AI?” Gardener asked.
“Yes. And he’s the same person who was involved in Farasha Island’s construction, and the same person we suspect is connected to the Alliance. His cause of death is a very suspicious suicide that followed him committing homicide while drunk… Oh, you can look up the investigation data yourself! You did get a copy, right?” Bigga glared at Investigator Gardener like she’d just run out of patience.
“I did, but I thought it’d be faster to ask you about it.” He hastened his gait, like a scolded child.
Echika glanced at Bigga and Gardener through the map deployed by her Your Forma. They’d been like that ever since they got out of the share car in the parking lot. It was Echika’s first time working with Gardener, and he was more undisciplined than she expected.
As she glanced at the detached houses lined up in the neighborhood, Bigga moved to walk beside her.
“Why did Chief Smith have to assign him to us?” she huffed bitterly under her breath, glancing at Gardener as he walked ahead of them. “I know he’s from the London branch and Lloyd’s case is supposed to be under their jurisdiction, but he’s originally from the Online Monitoring Department. What does he have to do with this?”
Bigga had had a slight fever until last night but finally had recovered that morning. Normally, she’d be inclined to take a few more days off, but it seemed she’d contracted workaholism on top of whatever illness had caused the fever.
“Well, the London branch’s Special Investigations Unit has lots of other issues to balance besides this case.” Echika closed the map. “Either way, I think the new chief just wanted to ship us off to get us out of his hair.”
“Yes, he did seem to think a trainee like me being involved was a recipe for trouble,” Bigga said, reflecting on the talk she’d had with Smith before they left the Lyon branch. “But why would he want to get rid of you?”
“He thinks I’m difficult to deal with because I’ve been working with Totoki for so long.”
“See, exactly! I don’t know what Director Schlosser’s thinking, either. Imagine suspecting Chief Totoki, of all people…” Bigga looked thoroughly outraged. “And some people in the Special Investigations Unit actually think Chief Totoki faked the USB. Can you believe it?!”
“And Investigator Gardener is on that side, huh?” Echika felt the oppressive mood return. “I guess there were some investigators who don’t know Chief Totoki that well and dislike her methods.”
Ever since Chief Smith was appointed, the mood in the Special Investigations Unit had been quite grim. Something of a schism had developed between investigators who had their doubts about Chief Totoki’s dismissal and those who believed she’d planted the USB. If this was what the Alliance was going for, Echika had to admit that it was a very competent plan.
“I guess Harold’s inkling was right…,” Bigga whispered, with a serious expression.
“The Alliance planted a mole in the Electrocrime Investigations Bureau.”
Echika had told Bigga about Harold’s theory. If he was right, that explained not just the matter of the USB but also why the search warrant for Lloyd’s villa had been stalled until now. There was no clear evidence to support it, but if the Alliance was interfering with the bureau, it would only be a matter of time before they would start disrupting its operations. At worst, they’d directly interfere with the investigation.