Siding Star

by Christopher Bryan

  And here was Cecilia—driving a large white police car, with its distinctive blue and yellow battenburg markings. The passenger-side window slid down as she pulled up.

  “Hop in!” she said. “My car’s having a service, so they’ve lent me one of these for the day.” After a few minutes of negotiating the morning traffic she said, “In one of these you’ll get to see the great British motorist in a wholly new light. You just watch! No one ever breaks the speed limit. No one ever cuts you off. Even if you crawl along ridiculously slowly very few people have the nerve to overtake you, and absolutely no one would dream of being so rude as to hoot at you. È incredibile!” Her lips curved into a smile. “All this you can find either amus- ing or depressing, depending, as dear Jane would have pointed out, on whether you’re in the mood for satire or moralizing.” “Jane?”

  “Jane Austen. My absolutely favorite author!”

  “Did Jane Austen say that?”

  “Yes. Well, more or less. She put it better, of course. In

  Sanditon .”

  “Sanditon? I love Jane Austen and I thought I knew her pretty

  well, but I don’t think I’ve heard of that.”

  “Lots of people haven’t. She died before she could finish it, so

  all we’ve got are the first eleven chapters. But they’re wonder-

  ful, all the same. Jane at her very best! She was able to be funny

  about hypochondria while she was dying. She was incredible.” Cecilia spoke cheerfully enough, yet Michael sensed she was

  in a somber mood. He soon learned why.

  Radiating chagrin, she told him about Wheatley’s suicide. “So the short and the long of it is,” she said, “you were right,

  and despite your warning us, we’ve royally screwed up.” Michael sighed. That he’d expected something like this

  didn’t make it any less disturbing when it came. Last night he’d

  confronted a man who—

  “I don’t believe it!” Cecilia said.

  “Believe what?”

  “Forget what I said about everyone driving perfectly—just

  look at that Fiesta!”

  A white Ford Fiesta in front of them had swerved out to pass

  a truck, and was pulling away rapidly.

  “He’s breaking the speed limit, isn’t he?”

  “He certainly is—and that’s just antipasto,” Cecilia said. “I

  don’t really do traffic, but that man’s a menace!” She switched

  on flashing blue lights, producing a strobe that seemed to shine

  around the entire street, and accelerated.

  The chase was brief. The driver of the other car obviously

  registered her presence within seconds, pulled to the side of the

  road, and stopped. Cecilia stopped in front of him.

  “Good job we’re early for your train,” she said. “This may

  take a minute.”

  siding stAr 233 She walked back to the other car and its driver, a young man with a young woman beside him. The road was quiet for the moment, and Michael could hear and see everything that followed.

  “Sir,” Cecilia said, “turn off your engine, please, and get out of the car, both of you. And you sir, I want to see your license.”

  The young man looked worried, as well he might, but he got out and so did the young woman.

  Cecilia looked at the license briefly and nodded.

  “All right. Please just wait a moment, sir.”

  Michael watched fascinated as she talked to someone on her mobile radio, giving details of the license and the Fiesta. Within minutes, it seemed, she was informed that there was nothing known against either.

  She nodded, and turned back to the couple.

  “Look, officer,” the young man blurted out, “it’s my mother!”

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said, “Did your mother teach you to ignore a stop sign, run a red light, and cross a double yellow line, all the time traveling way over the speed limit? And you were not wearing a safety belt.”

  “Officer, please, the hospital just called. Please! She’s dying. But she’s still conscious. They said she might not last the hour. Please. I’ll come to the station after I see her, pay a fine, any- thing you like. Only please don’t hold me up any longer.”

  Cecilia looked at the young woman, who said. “It’s really true officer. Please.”

  “Which hospital?”

  “Devon and Exeter.”

  Cecilia looked at him. Then she looked again at the young woman. “Is he fit to drive?” she asked.

  “Yes, officer, really. He’s ever such a safe driver, it’s just—”

  “All right! I believe you. Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll get you to the hospital. But first calm down! You won’t get to see your mother if you kill yourself on the way. Take a deep breath. Good. Now, get back in the car and buckle up. Both of you! Okay. Switch on your engine. Good. Now, I’m going back to the police car. When I pull out, pull out behind me, and follow me. Stick with me. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, officer.”

  Cecilia came back smartly to the police car and got in.

  “Hang on!” she said, buckling her seat belt.

  Michael found what followed as exciting as anything that had happened to him for a long time. Lights flashing and siren blaring, the blue, yellow, and white police car whipped through the midmorning traffic as everything scattered before it. Behind them, he could see the Fiesta hanging on grimly.

  Minutes later, they entered the hospital car park. Cecilia pulled over, leaned out of her window and pointed the following Fiesta to a vacant space. The young man parked, leapt out, and ran toward her.

  “Thank you! Thank you!”

  “That’s all right. Go! Go! Go!”

  He grabbed the young woman’s hand and off they ran.

  For a moment, Cecilia and Michael sat in silence.

  “I hope he gets to see his mother,” Michael said.

  “So do I. Just wait here a bit, will you.”

  He watched curiously as she left the car and went into the hospital.

  After several minutes inside the hospital she returned, smiling.

  “Apparently we did it. His mother’s still conscious.”

  “That was nice of you,” Michael said when she got back into the car. “Making sure they’d made it in time.”

  She raised one eyebrow, gave a half-smile, and shook her head.

  “If you really want to know, I did that partly to make sure he was telling the truth. I was pretty sure he was, but he could have been pulling a fast one.”

  “And if he had?”

  Siding Star 235 “Lying to a police officer? Wasting police time? Believe me, moving traffic violations would have been the very least of his problems.”

  Michael smiled.

  “Did you know,” she said, “that an amazingly high percentage of people who commit blatant moving traffic violations turn out on investigation to be breaking the law in some other way? We catch people like that all the time. It’s really odd. The very people you’d think would go out of their way not to get noticed do exactly what’s calculated to draw our attention.”

  “Oh.”

  “Still, even in this naughty world sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Apparently that really was just a panic-stricken young man trying to get to his mama’s bedside. And now I suppose we’d better get you to the train. With no more dramas, I hope.”

  “Yes, I suppose we had,” he said with a glance at his watch. “Though I must admit I did enjoy all that—racing along with the siren and the lights and everything.”

  She looked at him and her dark eyes suddenly danced with fun.

  “Yes,” she said, “it is rather satisfying, isn’t it?”

  At normal speed they pulled out of the car park.

  Michael watched her as she threaded her way unobtrusively through the traffic.

  Last night he’d seen her courage and skill in battle.
r />   Today he’d seen her kindness and chivalry.

  She really was magnificent.

  FiFty-Five

  Siding Springs Observatory. The same day

  The first thing was to check their own work, the second was to consult. During the next few hours Charlie and the rest of the Anglo-Australian team did both. They checked and rechecked their calculations, their equipment, and their conclusions. And they consulted furiously: with the European Space Observatory at La Silla, with the Herschel Space Observatory at La Palma, with the Inter-American Observatory at Cerro Tololo, with the Indians, with the Russians, and with absolutely anyone else with qualifications they respected who would talk to them. Each new dialogue seemed to confirm either the calcu- lations or the observations or both.

  So it was that finally Charlie felt he had no choice but to inform the government: which as far as he was concerned meant London, Brussels, and Canberra. His duty as a citizen of Europe and of the planet thus done, he told the others that even if the world ended in the next few hours he was not to be disturbed, and went to bed.

  As he entered his room it crossed his mind that if he were really the Christian he professed to be, or a real Jew, or a real Muslim, he’d be turning to God, falling to his knees, calling upon the Almighty. Indeed, if he were merely a nicer person,

  238

  ChristoPher BryAn he’d at least be grieving, anguishing over the loss of life and the coming end of all human hopes and dreams. Surely at least that?

  But the fact was, following the initial discovery, he and his colleagues had simply worked. They had checked, they had analyzed, they had evaluated, they had consulted. They had done these things because, end of the world or not, that was what they were supposed to do. That was their job. And now, calculations made, alternate hypotheses evaluated and rejected, he for one (he would not speak for the others) did not grieve for the planet nor importune its creator because he was simply numb with exhaustion.

  So, “Oh God!” as his head hit the pillow was the closest he came to prayer.

  FiFty-six

  Exeter. Later the same morning.

  “I

  ’m sorry, ma’am,” Verity Jones said. “I’m afraid I’m interrupting you.”

  Cecilia looked up and smiled.

  “You are, thank God.”

  “Well then, here you are, ma’am. We’ve checked on the book and the people you filmed and we’ve found details for most of them.”

  “Already?” Cecilia said. “That’s very good.”

  “Joseph says your pictures were excellent. He’s also made some good stills from them, in case we need them. The book was easy, of course. A good job you put the money by it so we could see the size. It’s obviously a perfect match—just a bit more beaten up. Do we actually have it?”

  Cecilia pointed to the plastic bag, which lay on the table.

  “I want it sealed, put in the safe, and no-one, I mean no-one, is to examine it without my personal permission. If anything were to happen to me, this is the man to consult about it.” She handed Verity Jones one of Michael Aarons’s cards. “No-one else. Make a note of it, and see my instructions are recorded in the file.”

  Verity Jones looked curious but took the card.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll see to it.”

  Cecilia nodded. The fact was, with Wheatley now beyond the reach of human justice, the main purpose for retaining the book was gone. Still, she was uncomfortable about destroying anything so materially connected with this affair until she was sure the whole business was cleared up, and she was by no means sure of that.

  “Now,” she said, “what about all these people?”

  “Right, ma’am! Well it was Joseph, really, who did them for you. What we thought were the interesting ones are on top. Hargrove, the Tory MP—well, you can see about him. He died in the fire—they found his body. The same for Hutton, the union man. The woman you caught leaving is Maria Coleman. She’s a bit of a mystery. Apparently she’s very high-powered in advertising. She left her coat behind in the building—Temperley London!—a bit charred, unfortunately, but with her name in it. And then they found her car, parked in the street a few meters away from the academy. Lord knows why she left that. It’s a Porsche!”

  Cecilia, who was turning over the photographs and notes in time with Verity Jones’s commentary, nodded.

  Verity Jones sailed on. “Wheatley of course you know. Then that one…” Cecilia turned up another photograph. “That’s it, the one hanging onto the porch!—he lectures there a bit. Has one of those PhDs you get for dredging up a lot of ill-digested information and then chucking some of it back when there’s more than you need. Ah, yes” (as Cecilia turned to yet another) “this one’s the real puzzle. He’s simply listed as ‘the Chairman.’ But there’s nothing else about him in the records at all: no name, no background, nothing. Most peculiar.”

  “Yes, that is peculiar. What records are those?”

  “Oh, just records… things we were looking at on the web… You know, things…”

  Verity Jones appeared suddenly to be very interested in the

  siding stAr 241

  wall behind Cecilia’s desk. Obviously, they’d hacked into the academy’s mainframe. Without a warrant. Cecilia raised one eyebrow, did her best to look severe, and dropped her gaze again to the papers Verity Jones had given her. There was a principle at stake here.

  An awkward silence. “You told us get what we could as quickly as possible, ma’am.”

  Cecilia nodded and continued to reading. She hadn’t told them to break the law. She was wondering how she should say that when Verity Jones said it for her.

  “Oh, I know—the problem is, we could come up with something damning we can’t use in court because we aren’t supposed to have it.”

  “That is the problem.” Cecilia laid down the sheaf. “I don’t want to stamp on your enthusiasm, but the thing is—if we don’t keep the law, who will? The Queen’s under the Law because it’s the Law that makes her Queen. We’re officers of the crown, so that applies to us, too. I know it can be frustrating but it’s actually what we’re here for.”

  She looked directly at her crestfallen colleague and of course relented. Over-enthusiasm could be a problem, but it was infi- nitely preferable to its opposite.

  “Enough said!” She grinned. “Now look, Joseph ought to send these other photographs to London. They might help the Met know who they’re trying to find. If they can’t locate that woman—Coleman—they may still be wondering if she died in the fire. Those pictures prove she didn’t. Maybe she even started it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Sergeant—”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You’ve got together a lot of good information here. Good work, both of you!”

  “Thank you ma’am!” Verity gave her with brilliant smile.

  “And now you at least know what to look for, let’s see how much you can find out legally!”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’ve got it, ma’am!” Verity Jones started to leave, then hesitated. “Oh, and by the way ma’am, I just wanted to say I was sorry to hear about your mum and dad’s fright last night and I’m glad they’re all right. Joseph asked me to send his good wishes too.”

  “Thank you, Verity. That’s very kind and they’re fine, thank you. And please thank Joseph for us.”

  She smiled after Verity Jones’s retreating figure. She was touched. She’d met a lot of concern about her parents this morning, despite the verbal rocket she’d fired off earlier about the suicide watch. Even now reposing on her desk was a large slice of lardy cake with a note from Sergeant Wyatt explaining that Mrs. Wyatt had just been baking and was sorry to hear about her parents’ nasty shock and thought she’d send along some cake. Mrs. Wyatt’s lardy cake, which Cecilia had sampled before, was incredibly good to eat. It wouldn’t remain on her desk for long.

  Half an hour or so later, when she was drinking tea and munching the lardy cake, it occurred to Cecilia
that she herself had ignored the law that morning by failing to book the young man with the dying mother.

  Which meant (as her beloved Jane would have put it) that with Verity Jones she had, like many great preachers and moralists, waxed eloquent on a subject in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

  Yet when she took the young man to the hospital she’d thought she was doing the right thing. She still thought so. And Michael Aarons had been with her and he seemed to approve, and he was a priest.

  But then, she also felt she’d been right to caution Verity Jones and company about ignoring procedures.

  Life was very complicated.

  Siding Star 243 She shook her head and decided that under the circumstances the only sensible thing was to turn her full attention to Mrs. Wyatt’s lardy cake, which in any case deserved it.

  FiFty-seven

  Siding Springs Observatory. Slightly later.

  Charlie couldn’t breathe. He gasped and choked, trying to inhale. But something was pressing down on his chest, his head, his stomach. Stop it! Stop it! He would have cried out, but nothing came. Gritting his teeth, he made a desperate effort and at last, as if forcing himself through mud, came upright—

  There was the tower, the domed tower… and now the wind, and the doors. White and gold, there was white and gold everywhere. And pillars so huge he couldn’t see around them. That always came now. A painted ceiling so lofty he could only catch glimpses of green and gold through mists that swirled and ballooned above him.

  Oh dear Christ, yes. And now the chessboard! In a minute he’d see the man. Yes, there he was, waiting for him. The man whose face he couldn’t yet see. Only his long black robe.

  And behind him, something else, something dark and looming and dangerous.

  Something that waited.

  The man turned, as always, mist swirling around the dark robe. And now Charlie saw the face, the eyes dark and kind, but commanding.

  246

  ChristoPher BryAn And as always, the man’s voice. “You must!” Tones low, but urgent. “You must!”