Ulysses had been so determined to save Rossum’s life, in order to prove his innocence, that his actions had actually resulted in the wretched man’s death.
The inspector broke away from a circle of policemen and forensic scientists, leaving them to their work, and made her way over to where Ulysses sat, disconsolately, with his head in his hands.
“You’re off the hook; you know that, don’t you?” she said.
Ironically, in the eyes of the law – at least the law as represented by Inspector Artemis – he was now exonerated of all crimes, despite having ultimately inadvertently killed Dominic Rossum himself.
“Am I?”
“Well, not completely. Make no mistake I’ll still be keeping a close eye on whatever you get up to as long as you remain in the city. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know here, am I?”
Ulysses shook his head.
“But as far as I can see, unless this is some highly elaborate subterfuge, you weren’t the one behind the murder of Jared Shurin, or that of Wilberforce Bainbridge, and nor were you responsible for the attempt made on Dominic Rossum’s life – in spite of its tragic outcome.”
Ulysses said nothing, but looked at her with a haunted expression on his face.
“You only discovered your brother’s death yesterday,” the police officer went on, “and the only likely co-conspirator I see around here is your man who, until only a few moments ago, was cuffed just as you had been.
“I don’t believe either of you was really in a position to set that trap for Rossum. So, ironic as it may sound, I don’t hold you responsible for Rossum’s death, even though it could be argued that you were the one that did for him in the end.”
She cast him a wry smile.
“Unless of course it was all part of an elaborate ruse to make you believe my innocence,” Ulysses said.
“Don’t push your luck,” Artemis laughed. “Besides, when did you have time to set all this up? And why would you put yourself at risk, exposing yourself in such a way? You don’t strike me as the sort of man to sacrifice himself unduly. And you’ve been under armed guard ever since we got here. No, I’m going to let you off this one, but don’t think that means I’m not still going to keep a close eye on you.”
Ulysses fixed her with a cold, flinty stare.
“Let me guess... Your train of thought goes something like this. If you let me go and keep tabs on what I’m doing, I might lead you to the ones actually responsible?”
Artemis laughed again. “What, you think I’ve got nothing better to do all day other than run around after you?”
“I’m a charmer, you know? The ladies can’t keep away.”
“I’ll be seeing you later, I’m sure,” she said, as she began to walk away.
And then she hesitated.
“Unless you know of any other potential leads, avenues of enquiry that you’d like to share with me now?”
“No. Nothing,” he lied. “There were the three industrialists and that was it, and I’m still none the wiser as to what they had to do with Barty or what he might have had on them.”
The lurid pink flyer loomed large in his mind’s eye. It was all he’d been thinking about for the last few minutes, since he had averted the crisis at the robot factory, and yet not really averted it at all.
“Well, if you do happen to think of anything...”
“I’ll give you a call,” Ulysses lied again.
As Inspector Artemis left to pursue her own lines of enquiry, a familiar and most welcome figure approached Ulysses, rubbing at the sore skin of his wrists.
“Might I enquire as to – I believe the phrase is – how you are doing, sir?” Nimrod asked stiffly.
“I’ve been better,” Ulysses sighed.
“We’re free to go.”
“Are we?” Ulysses asked, fixing his old friend with a weary look. “I’m not free of the knowledge that my brother’s murderer still walks abroad. I am not free of the guilt I feel at my part in all this.”
“Your part, sir? You mean Mr Rossum’s death, I take it?”
“I actually meant my part in Barty’s self-imposed exile to this godforsaken rock.”
“That was nothing to do with you, sir!” Nimrod contested with surprising vehemence. “You are wholly blameless in that regard!”
“Am I?”
“Of course, sir! One hundred per cent.”
“Well, whether that is the case or no, Barty’s killer is still at large. And it looks as though the only people on the Moon capable of solving this mystery are the two of us, old chap.”
“In that case, sir, am I to take it that you have a stratagem as to how we proceed from here on in?”
“Indeed you are, Nimrod. Indeed you are.”
“So you were being, shall we say, economical with the truth when you were conversing with the inspector?”
“Right again, Nimrod!” Ulysses said, a spark of triumph in his voice and something like an ember of the old fire glowing in the black pits of his eyes.
Ulysses suddenly sprang to his feet.
“So, sir, where next?”
“Petit Paris, Nimrod. Venusville,” he said, taking the folded flyer from his pocket and opening it up in front of him. His manservant’s nose wrinkled in disgust, as if he had just caught a whiff of something noxious and undesirable. “More precisely, The Moulin Rouge in Venusville. I rather think it’s time we dropped in on Miss Selene, don’t you?”
Act Three
Sin City
June 1998
I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Moulin Rouge
T MINUS 1 DAY, 10 HOURS, 29 MINUTES, 7 SECONDS
WITH STANDARD IMPERIAL Time reading close to midnight, the rest of Luna Prime was settling down to sleep for the artificially-managed night; but not Venusville. Venusville never slept. While the rest of the populace were retiring to bed, many of those who either worked in the city’s notorious red light district, or who were visiting it at that late hour, were also going to bed, although with something other than sleep on their minds.
The rust-coloured droid clanked to a halt and slowly relaxed, sinking down on its piston legs as steam vented from its joints.
“There you go, gents,” the girl in the driver’s seat said, pushing her goggles up onto the top of her head and giving them a cheery smile. “Venusville, as requested!” The white rings around her eyes and the soot smearing the rest of her face gave her the appearance of a panda.
“Thank you...?”
“Billie, sir.”
“Thank you, Billie. You have been most helpful.”
“Not a problem, sir. Are you sure I can’t take you anywhere in particular? How about The Last Resort or the Automaton Arena? They do say there’s something for everyone in Venusville, especially a couple of discerning gents like you.”
“That won’t be necessary, thank you,” Nimrod said dismissively.
“No, here’s just fine,” Ulysses added, with rather more tact.
The dandy knew that there was something for everyone in Venusville from personal experience, although he had been a young man the last time he had stopped by here.
You could walk past the canal-side brothels of New Amsterdam, take in an exotic dancing extravaganza in one of the vaudevillian theatres of Petit Paris, partake of the rough pleasures of a Turkish bath or wile away hours – or even days at a time – in the opium dens of Chinatown.
If you could afford to pay for it, in Venusville you could buy it.
The place was a celebration of gaudiness and depravity, all under one dome. Here private shops, selling clockwork sex toys, and brothels rubbed shoulders with Italian ice-cream parlours and Oriental drug dens. Casinos, along with every other form of gambling imaginable, proliferated here with the result that some people never left – arriving as optimistic, nouveau riche parvenus on the up and reduced to begging on the streets
after literally losing the shirts off their backs in one of the many iniquitous poker dens before the day was out.
He wondered how many of those who came to the Moon to start a new life found themselves trapped here, as destitute as they might have been had they stayed on Earth, ruined by greed; their own as well as that of the bookies.
He wondered if Barty had ever visited any of these places. Then he stopped wondering. Of course he had. He must have done. But had it been this place that had led him into trying to blackmail three of the most powerful men on the Moon? Had Barty stumbled across their combined secret in one of these seedy backstreet flea pits?
The girl looked at Ulysses with brows furrowed. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, sir, but do I know you?”
“We almost took your cab when we arrived at the Bedford-Cavor Spaceport two days ago.”
“Ah, that must be it. I thought it was from somewhere else, a more recent fare, but that must be it. You had a lady and an old guy with you.”
“That’s right.”
“See, I never forget a face.”
“Well, that’s excellent. Well done. Perhaps we’ll see you around again some time,” Ulysses said, nonchalantly turning his attention from the girl and her droid to the gaudily lit-up club on the opposite side of the street. “Pay the lady would you, Nimrod?”
Nimrod did as he was bid; peeling one bill off from the bundle of notes that suddenly appeared in his hand, as Ulysses disembarked. He clambered down from the shoulders of the Juggernaut-class droid via the passenger ladder, having already passed on the option of having the droid lift him down.
“I’m surprised you wanted to travel by automaton after what happened at Rossum’s Universal Robots,” Nimrod said as he joined Ulysses on the ground.
“Nimrod, you really can be such an old woman sometimes,” Ulysses said with a mirthless chuckle.
His manservant said nothing but gave a snooty huff.
“Come on, Rusty. Time we were on our way.”
Behind them, the girl pulled on a series of levers and she and the droid departed in the direction of the nearest cab rank, ready to make the return journey to Luna Prime’s main dome courtesy of another paying customer.
Nimrod looked at the facade of the building in front of them now with the same aloof expression of disgust with which he had greeted his master’s suggestion that they should pay a visit to Luna Prime’s red light district in the first place.
“You think the answers you seek lie within this den of iniquity?”
Ulysses nodded. “I think the means to getting them might.”
Above the entrance the sails of a red-painted windmill turned, each one picked out in lurid electric light. The tinkling of a pianola was vying for attention with a wheezing steam organ that hissed and groaned somewhere nearby.
The place had obviously seen better days. The lights and lurid pink drapes that adorned the exterior of the club did nothing to hide the peeling varnish and scuffed paintwork, if one bothered to look, which, to be honest, Ulysses doubted many of the club’s clientele did. The state of the decor wasn’t the thing uppermost in most people’s minds when they paid a visit to the Moulin Rouge.
Like its original Parisian counterpart, the Moulin Rouge was notorious – even by the laissez-faire standards of Venusville.
Recognising Ulysses for the dandy he was – a man of substance and class with, at best, a loose attachment to his morals in certain areas – a thickset doorman, wearing a straining black tuxedo, stepped aside to let him and his manservant enter.
“Tip the man, would you?” Ulysses said coolly, his sword-cane swinging in his hand.
He looked for all the world like a casual tourist, visiting Venusville for a little light relief, come to fritter away his fortune on loose women, cheap champagne and over-priced cocktails. He certainly did not look like a man still mourning his dead brother; but then that was precisely the impression he didn’t want to cultivate in others.
It wasn’t the real him. It might have been once, but not now.
He was still grieving for his late, lamented brother, but it was that very grief that now allowed him to maintain such a convincing facade, his mask of nonchalant playboyish-ness. Below the veneer of his devil-may-care attitude, he did care – very much. Circumstances had forced his hand and he was now determined to avenge Barty’s death, and it was that focus alone that enabled him to give the impression that, right at that moment, there was nowhere he’d rather be than the Moulin Rouge in Venusville’s French quarter.
They passed through a gloomy lobby, decked out in blacks and deep purples, and lit only by a few latticed oil-lamps, circumvented the coat check, and passed through a set of swinging double doors into the heart of the club itself.
The air was thick with the blue fug of tobacco smoke, stale liquor and cheap perfume. Ulysses took a deep breath.
“Ahhh... Can you smell it?”
“Smell what, sir?” Nimrod said, nose wrinkling in disgust.
“Vice, Nimrod. The smell of dodgy deals done, lascivious liaisons shared and vices partaken of. Sin, old boy. We’re in Sin City now.”
“Hmm,” Nimrod grunted, noncommittally. “The air is redolent with a distinct lack of taste and decorum, if you ask me. The sort of place...” He suddenly caught himself.
“The sort of place my brother would frequent, you mean?”
Nimrod looked at the floor, cheeks reddening in mortified embarrassment.
“I meant no disrespect, sir.”
“None taken. But you forget that I’ve seen my fair share of stews and drug dens the world over. A life lived before it began to mellow with age.”
“I do not forget, sir,” Nimrod corrected him. “It is rather that I try hard not to remember.”
“Very well, have it your own way. Now get the drinks in while I find us a table.”
As Nimrod obediently made his way towards the lurid lights and noxiously coloured bottles on display behind the neon-lit bar, Ulysses navigated the network of tables laid out before the stage.
He made slow progress, as much thanks to the distracting spectacle that was being revealed on stage, as by the close packed nature of the furniture.
She was tall, her elegant, shapely legs made all the longer by the frankly obscene heels she was wearing. And she was as good as naked. A few strips of sparkly material and what looked like little more than a few pieces of black cotton protected what little modesty she had left, while a glittering black feather boa did little to hide the pertness of her exposed breasts or the erect studs of her nipples. The whole ensemble – what there was of it – was finished with generous amounts of powder, lip-gloss, eye-liner and mascara.
Ulysses assumed that she had had a little more on when she had first taken to the stage but the end result was what mattered in a – for want of a better word – strip joint like the Moulin Rouge.
He sat down, resting his cane on his lap and stretching out languorously, teasing out the knots in his aching muscles. The skin of his elbows and knees still stung from his tumble across the robot marshalling yard. But at least he had survived his encounter with the Titan-droid, unlike the unfortunate Rossum.
An up-tempo tune permeated the atmosphere of the club and as the black-haired beauty on stage brought her performance to an end – embellishing the bounteous gifts Mother Nature had supplied her with with a few flicks of her hair, spins around a conveniently positioned pole and modesty-risking high kicks and splits – Ulysses did his best to concentrate on his surroundings and select the best escape route, just in case, as much as the club’s almost entirely male clientele were concentrating on the delightful young woman on stage.
The bar curved around one side of the elliptical space that enclosed the stage. To either side of the dancers’ podium, a flight of stairs curved around the walls to the floor above, joining with a balcony that formed a complete ellipsis around the tabled area beneath. The faces of rouged young women – some barely in their teens – and the whiskered f
aces of the much older gentlemen they were entertaining peered down through the fug, also watching the burlesque act.
Ulysses had been to enough clubs like this one to know that leading off from the balcony would be the myriad rooms where the working girls of the Moulin Rouge ensured that the oldest profession was still alive and kicking at this furthest of the British Empire’s frontiers. There had been bawds in tow when the Romans invaded Britain two millennia before, just as the soldiers fighting for queen and country in the many notable conflicts of the nineteenth century had found female companions readily to hand to offer relief from the stresses and strains of battle, and one of the first flights to the newly erected Luna Prime, more than forty years before, had brought with it its own ‘monstrous regiment’ of women.
He took the folded flyer from his jacket pocket and opened it. He sniffed the scented paper, the heady smell of jasmine flowers waking the suppressed memories of a rebirth in the hidden valley of Shangri-La, a quarter of a million miles away. But where would he find the fragrant Selene? On stage? Behind the bar? Or upstairs, already otherwise engaged?
“Your drink, sir,” Nimrod said, placing a glass of brandy on the table in front of him.
Ulysses took the glass in his hand, resting it in his upturned palm, its stem between his third and fourth fingers. He held it under his nose and inhaled deeply, the heady vapours of the alcohol raising their own not unwelcome ghosts from his subconscious. He took a swig, savouring the honeyed sweetness and fiery aftertaste of the liquor as it slipped like melted chocolate down his throat.
“Thank you, Nimrod.” He cast his manservant a sideways glance. “What are you drinking?”
“Aqua mineralis. On the rocks.”
Ulysses smiled. The older man, prim and proper in his butler’s attire, was sitting perched on the very edge of his seat, straight-backed, and looking as uncomfortable as a serial killer about to be interviewed by the police about the bodies they’d just turned up under his patio.
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