Murder in the Multiverse

by R E McLean

  Claire shuddered. Email would do for her, even if it did annoy her suppliers, along with some of her less antiquated distribution managers. She was Claire Pope, internet billionaire, so they just had to go along with it.

  But first, what she really wanted was sleep. Maybe she should lie down and go online, head for her favorite luxury hotel. Somewhere exclusive, lacking other guests or intrusive staff to disturb her solitude. She could turn on slowdown mode, enjoy a few more hours in the Hive than were passing outside. But doing that would give her a hangover, and she needed to be sharp.

  She swigged the last of the coffee and flicked a switch for a sixth cup, then passed into her bedroom. Leo wasn’t in here; he would be asleep in his basket under the kitchen island at this time of day, enjoying daydreams of particularly slow-moving and easy to catch rabbits. She smiled at the thought of it.

  The pale cream carpets, left behind by the previous owner, absorbed her footsteps and cradled her skin. She never wore shoes; what was the point if you never left the house? The kitchen had underfloor heating and the rest of the apartment was carpeted, so her feet were always bare.

  She paused at the door to the bedroom. She sniffed the air.

  Something was wrong. The normal scent of her perfume mixed with peppermint air freshener was overlaid with something sharper that she could almost taste. She licked her lips and retched, just a little bit. She could feel her skin turning clammy.

  She peered into the bedroom, puzzled. No one could get into this flat. There were eight locks on the main door. The balcony door was sealed shut from the inside. She never went out there, terrified of contact with her neighbors. And the smell, the overwhelming, dirty brown smell of the outside world, even here in Silicon City with its clean energy and robotic litter pickers, made her want to puke.

  The room was empty. She peered at the windows. It was getting dark now; a Hackney glided past over the street, and the Golden Gate Bridge was brightly lit against the approaching dusk. She whispered a command into the voice unit by the door and the drapes swished closed. An action she always enjoyed, that she’d repeated over and over again after moving in. Problem was, the AI that ran the in-home smart systems had become so accustomed to her doing it that every time she said the word ‘close’ she would hear the drapes gliding shut in the bedroom. She’d tried telling it to forget its programming, and asking it politely to stop—everything short of getting her meat tenderizer from the kitchen and punching its artificial brains out—but still it persisted.

  The smell was still there. It was acrid, and heavy, and organic.

  “Leo?” she called. He was in his basket, she was sure of it.

  “Master Leo is currently in the bedroom,” came the response from the box next to her on the wall. She scowled at it. It never called her ‘Mistress Claire’. Somehow it seemed to have decided that the dog was in charge.

  “Leo?” she called, louder this time. A thud came from the wardrobe. She felt her muscles release and hurried to the wall-height sliding doors, pushing them open with one finger. The AI didn’t like her doing this manually; it fritzed up its memory of whether each door was open or closed at any one time and would prompt disgruntled silences for up to twenty-three minutes each time she did it.

  The dog fell out of the wardrobe, panting in delight at seeing her. He was a large Labrador, the imperfection in this flat that made it perfect, like the grit that forms a pearl. Not that Leo could be described as a pearl in any way; he was a lolling, enthusiastic kind of dog who liked to lick her ears while she slept. If she shifted out of the way he would continue licking the pillow, oblivious to the change. But she loved him nonetheless.

  She crouched down and wrapped her arms around him. On the wall, she heard the AI harrumph.

  “Shut up, Malcolm,” she told it. It whistled a short but sarcastic ditty and then went quiet.

  “You gave me a scare there, boy,” she told the dog, who continued licking her face and making happy little growling noises. She laughed and let him carry on, grateful that no one else would ever see her saliva-soaked face.

  7

  Fish hook

  San Francisco

  25 March, 12:20pm

  Alex didn’t feel like going into her office in LeConte Hall, the 1920s building that housed the physics department. And Rik wouldn’t be there yet.

  Rik was a mild-mannered, softly spoken man built like a brown bear. A brown bear that wore leather jackets, had floppy hair and liked to listen to the Michael Medved show while he worked. Alex hated it—the standard of ‘debate’ made her want to pull her own eardrum out with a fish hook—but it helped Rik to focus. It made him about two hundred and twenty percent less likely to decide he needed a Big Mac.

  Because Rik was always hungry. Despite having a physique which made him ineligible for most rides at Disneyworld, he never stopped complaining of his stomach rumbling.

  He liked to work nomadically. In the local McDonald’s. Alex slipped into the window seat next to him, grabbing the coffee he’d already bought for her and adding her habitual four sugars. It was just warm enough to drink.

  Luckily the physics department had an enlightened view of digital nomads. It prided itself on embracing the twenty-first century by encouraging staff to work wherever they pleased.

  Ninety-four-and-one-half percent of Alex’s time was spent in front of a spreadsheet and not in a lab. Which meant that working nomadically suited her. The office she shared with Rik was a room which could only have been intended as a broom cupboard. It even had a broom. Rik used it to swipe at stray spiders but, other than that, it never saw any action.

  The longer they could stay away from it, the better. And Alex had something she wanted to tell Rik; something she didn’t want to discuss in the office.

  “You’re kidding,” he said, sucking his strawberry milkshake noisily.

  “I’ve run the equations again. Twice. I did it at home last night and it scared my cat out of his brains. One of them is enough to deal with.”

  “You need to tell Katz. He’ll be made up.”

  “He’s been trying to work this out for five and a half years. I’ve been here eighteen months. He’ll hate me.”

  “Who cares? You solved the Cheshire Cat conundrum. He’ll want to know.”

  Alex eyed her partner. He didn’t care about faculty politics; he saw himself crunching data and slipping out for a daily Big Mac till his plentiful kids left home and he could retire. Alex was different. She wanted to be at the cutting edge of her field, to discover something so momentous even her dad would know about it.

  Now she had. But she’d done it while trespassing in the lab, and using data that wasn’t strictly hers. If she revealed what she’d done to Dr Katz, he’d take all the credit. If she challenged him, she could wave goodbye to her future. And besides, who’d believe what she’d seen?

  “So tell me again,” Rik said. “A disembodied cat’s head.”

  “Yup.” She glanced around to check no one was listening.

  “You do know that the Cheshire Cat experiment isn’t really about cats.”

  She gave him a playful but annoyed slap on his shoulder. “You don’t need to tell me that.”

  “You sure you hadn’t been hitting the Bud?”

  “I don’t drink Bud.”

  “Whisky then, or whatever you kilties wear.”

  “I was stone cold sober.”

  “Then you must have been tired.”

  “I saw it, Rik. It meowed at me.”

  He laughed. “Everything meows at you. It’s that moggy of yours, it’s got to your head.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  She’d had enough of this. He was right, of course; their research was about subatomic particles, not sections of cats.

  “Come on,” she huffed. “Let’s go to the broom cupboard.”

  He shoved the last scraps of bread into his mouth and scrunched the container into a ball, aiming it at the bin. It hit first time and he took a little bow. �
��Alright then. You’ll regret it.”

  They slid in through the back doors and headed for their broom cupboard. It was almost lunchtime, but anyone seeing them would assume they’d been working out of a coffee shop somewhere. So modern. So Millennial. Sometimes being young had its advantages; you could bamboozle older and more senior staff just by mentioning wifi hotspots.

  Rik pushed open the door, trying to hide a yawn. He had five children under the age of ten at home and a programmer wife who worked long hours for a startup that had more fake grass than it did customers. Alex was amazed he even woke up in the mornings.

  Alex followed and crashed into his back.

  “Hey. C’mon Rik, let me pass.”

  “Err. Hello Professor Yang,” Rik said.

  “Rik. Alex. How are you? Sad business yesterday morning.”

  “Er, yes,” replied Rik. He hadn’t known the deceased but there was convention to be followed.

  Alex shuffled in behind Rik. Simon Yang never came here. They’d only spoken to him once, at a social event ten days after her arrival eighteen months ago.

  She thought about the lab, how she’d left it last night. She thought she’d tidied up, but…

  “Come with me, Alex.”

  “Err, OK. What’s this about?”

  The Professor frowned. “You have a visitor.”

  Alex gave Rik a nervous smile. He grinned and pulled out his chair, most likely relieved it was her being picked out and not him.

  She walked with Professor Yang along the pin-clean corridors, muttering her awkward thanks each time he stopped to hold a door open for her. At his office he opened the door once again and gestured for her to go through.

  She gave him a nervous smile and went in.

  Professor Yang’s office was a disappointment. She was expecting a grand space, something that celebrated the building’s nearly one-hundred-year history. Leaded windows, musty bookshelves. Maybe an experiment buzzing ominously in the corner.

  But it was an office like any other. Larger than hers, but otherwise unremarkable. It was lined with shelves full of physics books, with more piled on the floor. She spotted a glass case with what looked like an early edition Principia.

  She approached it.

  “Wow. How old is this?”

  “Not as old as it looks, I’m afraid. Alex, I’d like you to meet Monique Williams.”

  She turned to see a willowy African American woman easing herself up from a low chair. She was tall and delicate-looking, like a stiff breeze might snap her in two. She extended a hand, pale with bitten fingernails. Alex took it and the woman brushed her wrist with her other hand; a single diamond ring sparkling on its ring finger.

  “Monique Williams,” she said. “You must be Alex.”

  Alex took a step back. This woman had a voice that could puncture your eardrums at forty paces.

  Alex stuck out her hand. “Alex Strand.”

  Professor Yang picked his way over a pile of books to sit behind his desk. He slumped into his chair, seemingly relieved to have made it.

  “Monique is a Lieutenant from the SFPD.”

  “Oh.”

  She’d ridden her bicycle home on Tuesday; she didn’t run a red light, she was sure. She’d recycled all her bottles and plastic this week; her landlady had warned her that recycling was the law here. She hadn’t cleaned a spittoon in the street, another odd local law. But —oh no, now she had it—it was Schrödinger. It had to be. She hadn’t had him neutered.

  “You’re expecting me to arrest you, aren’t you? Monique barked.

  “Er no, Lieutenant.”

  “Call me Monique. I don’t have rank over you. Although I wish I did.”

  Alex looked at Professor Yang. His eyes sparkled as if he was enjoying her confusion.

  “I don’t understand. Has something happened? Is someone hurt?”

  Monique sighed. “Apart from poor Doctor Pierce, no.”

  Alex wondered how she knew the dead woman. Her death hadn’t been suspicious, had it?

  “Alright then. How can I help you?”

  “Alex, would you by any chance have a day or two to spare, to help us out with something?”

  She looked at Professor Yang. He was nodding.

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “Good. In that case, I’d like you to come with me.” She stood up.

  “You’re not arresting me?”

  Monique smiled. “Being Scottish isn’t a crime.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And neither is failing to have your cat neutered, believe it or not.”

  “How did you—”

  A laugh, more like a foghorn on a misty night at Golden Gate. “Don’t worry. Come with me.”

  Alex stood up. She raised her eyebrows at the Dean and he gave her an encouraging nod. She turned back to the cop.

  “Is this a—er—a work-related thing?’

  “You could say that.”

  “I think it would be helpful if my lab partner came along too. Rik Patel. He’s more experienced than me.”

  “I’m sorry. Only room for one. And you’re the most suitable.”

  Professor Yang cleared his throat. “You’ve surprised us.”

  Alex waited for him to elaborate.

  “That spillage, in Dr Katz’s lab, night before last. What did it smell of?”

  So he knew.

  “Er, glue?”

  “And can you remember what you input to Dr Katz’s computer, on the same night?”

  “I deleted that.”

  “Dr Katz undeleted it.”

  “How do you know it was me?”

  A sigh. “CCTV.”

  “It was dark.”

  “We have infrared.”

  Wow. They’d thought of everything.

  “So,” continued the Dean. “What did you make of your calculations?”

  She swallowed. “Multiple universes. It proves them.”

  He nodded. “Of course. Now, please go with the Lieutenant. She’ll fill you in on the way.”

  Alex frowned. The detective gave her a lopsided smile.

  Dr Yang nodded. “And be safe.” He took her hand. “Won’t you?”

  “Er, yes. Of course.” Was the lieutenant such a bad driver?

  “Come on.” Monique was at the door. “We’ll look after you.”

  “I need to go via my office. Grab my bag.”

  “Of course.”

  They returned the way Alex had come. Monique said nothing but kept pace with Alex as if she knew where they were going.

  At the office, Alex coughed before opening the door. Rik was watching as she entered, his face expectant.

  Monique stayed in the corridor, much to her relief.

  “Everything OK?” he asked.

  “There was a cop in the Dean’s office. She’s asked me to help her with something.”

  “OK.” His brow creased.

  “If I’m not back in a couple of days, check at the Hall of Justice, will you?”

  “Have they arrested you?”

  “No. But it’s odd. That’s all.”

  “Right. Good luck. I’ll keep your desk warm.”

  I bet you will, she thought, as they headed outside. Rik would be back in McDonald’s quicker than you could say ‘quantum entanglement’. It was time for his post-lunch apple pie.

  Monique was in the corridor, barking into a cellphone.

  “What did you tell him?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Good. I’m taking you to the Hall of Justice.”

  “You have to read me my rights.”

  “I already told you I’m not arresting you.”

  “So why the Hall of Justice?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Alex followed, still not convinced. Why hadn’t she had Schrödinger neutered?

  8

  Banana

  San Francisco

  25 March, 1:53pm

  Alex stood at the back of the room, feeling awkward. A
man eating a banana stood in front of her, slowly peeling off its skin and nibbling at it.

  The man turned to her as if reading her mind and gave her a supercilious smile. He leaned toward the woman next to him and whispered in her ear. She chuckled.

  Alex felt heat rise up her neck and into her chin. She had no idea what she was doing here. Monique had told her to find a spot at the back, then breezed to the other end of the room with no word of explanation.

  Monique cleared her throat. The room quietened.

  “Alright,” Monique said. “What do we have?”

  Behind her was a board. The kind of thing Alex had seen on TV: map in the center, gruesome photos of the victim splattered in blood, red lines leading to various locations, leads and the like.

  Except this one was different. Where normally there would be ribbons leading to the victim’s regular haunts, maybe photos of her acquaintances and enemies, there was nothing.

  Alex knew whose murder they were investigating. Claire Pope, internet billionaire and hermit. She thought of the way Shrew had hissed at the screen when she’d been watching the news.

  Monique had stopped pacing and was leaning over a laptop. A projected rectangle of white appeared on the screen behind her, overlaying the map.

  There was a squeak behind Alex as the door eased open. She turned to see a slender, holey-bearded man enter. The man from the funeral. She frowned at him and he raised a finger to his lips in return as he slid in next to her.

  “So,” said Monique. “This is our prime suspect. Claire’s ex, and the last person with whom she had meaningful face-to-face contact. Sean Wibble, better known as Sean Wolf, the ballet dancer.”

  There was a snort at the front. Monique glared ahead and it stopped.

  Alex squinted at the screen. He was an interesting-looking man, resembling a combination of Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise, and Harry Potter. Which would be a winning combination, except that it wasn’t the face of the hoarcrux-hunting, soon-to-appear-naked-on-Broadway Harry Potter, but the chesspiece-straddling, cupboard-under-the-stairs Harry. With rainbow specs.