The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The rioters and celebrants who had laid siege to the station the day the PSP fell had now been replaced by the media army.

  “Good God,” Eleanor murmured when they reached the end of Church Street.

  Greg guessed there must have been over two hundred of them; and it was like an army, rank denoted by the uniform: reporters in smooth suits, broadcast crews in T-shirts and shorts, production staff in designer casuals. The majority had taken over the broad pavement opposite the station, although some camera operators had staked out positions on the park’s earth embankment giving them a good view of the station. Several fast-food caravans had set up shop in front of the Catholic church a hundred metres further down the road. They were doing a good trade with production PM.

  Greg sounded the horn as he indicated to turn into the station. A knot of twelve people were just standing in the middle of the road, channel logos on their jackets.

  “Well, I suppose the local pubs will be happy,” Eleanor said.

  There was a lone bobby standing outside the gate in the slice-wire fence. He was about twenty-five, wearing dress whites, shorts, and half-sleeve shirt, with a peaked cap, and looking very fed up.

  “Oh, bugger,” Greg muttered as he lowered the window. The rear-view mirror showed him the reporters converging en masse on the EMC Ranger.

  “Yes, sir?” the bobby asked.

  “I’m here to see Detective Inspector Langley,” Greg said. He held up his general ident card, pressing his thumb on the activation patch.

  The bobby pulled out his police-issue cybofax, and the two exchanged polarized photons in a blink of dim ruby light. Reporters were clustering round the bobby, jostling to see what was going on. Two camera operators had shoved their lenses up against Eleanor’s window.

  “Go straight in, sir,” the bobby said after his cybofax had confirmed Greg’s identity. He blipped the gate lock. It started to swing open.

  The action triggered off a barrage of questions from the reporters.

  “Who are you, mate?”

  “What have you come here for?”

  “Are you a relative of Kitchener?”

  “Smile for us, luv!”

  Greg toed the accelerator as soon as the gate started to open, nudging the EMC Ranger towards the gap in short jerks. The bobby was trying to shove the crush of reporters to one side.

  Greg switched to a broad Lincoinshire accent, and bellowed out of the open window: “I’m here to see about me bleedin’ sheep, ain’t I? Some bastard’s been pinching ‘em right out o’ the field. What’s it got to do with you buggers? Get out the bleeding way!”

  The EMC Ranger must have added authenticity, a mudcaked farm vehicle, even though it was new and expensive. A chorus of groans went up. The reporters gave each other annoyed shrugs, and gave up.

  The gate closed behind them.

  Eleanor was smiling broadly. “Very good. I give it less than twenty minutes before they discover you are the Greg Mandel who had Julia Evans as a bridesmaid at his wedding.”

  “I expect you’re right.”

  There were five police vehicles parked in the yard, four old EMC electric hatchbacks, powered by high-density polymer batteries, and a rust-spotted Black Maria with ten-year-old number plates. Greg parked the EMC Ranger next to a line of scooters.

  There was a woman officer waiting for them. She introduced herself as Detective Sergeant Amanda Paterson, a pleasant-faced thirty-year-old with mouse-brown hair, wearing a white blouse and fawn skirt. She shook hands with a surprisingly strong grip, but her manner was fairly reserved.

  “I’ll take you to see Inspector Langley,” she told them briskly. “He’s heading the inquiry.”

  “Are you working on the case?” Greg asked.

  “Yes, sir.” There was no elaboration. She opened the door, and ushered them into the station. The air inside was cool and stale, there were no fans or conditioners to circulate it. Biolum strips screwed on to the ceiling cast a weary light along the corridor. The original electric tubes had been left in place, their pearl glass covers grey with dust.

  It was all very basic, Greg thought, as she led them to the central stairwell. The grey-green ribbed carpet was badly worn, walls were scarred with rubber shoe marks above the skirting-board, cream-coloured paint had darkened, doors were scuffed and scratched and didn’t even have ‘ware locks.

  The police didn’t enjoy much public confidence right now, he knew. But starving them of money and resources was hardly going to help their morale and efficiency, certainly not at a time when the New Conservatives were trying to claim the credit for resurrecting an honest and impartial judicial system.

  They passed a mess room, and three uniformed constables glanced out. Their faces hardened as soon as they saw Greg and he began to wonder just what sort of stories were orbiting the station.

  The CID office was on the second floor. Amanda Paterson knocked once on the door, and walked in. Greg followed her into the noise of shrilling phones and murmuring voices. There were six imitation-wood desks inside, three of them occupied by men, detectives in shirt sleeves typing away at their terminal keyboards, one with an old-fashioned phone handset jammed between his shoulder and jaw. They all stared at Greg and Eleanor. Metal filing cabinets were lined up along the wall next to the door, kelpboard boxes piled on top. A big flatscreen covered the rear wall, displaying a large-scale map, with half of Oakham showing as a red and brown crescent along the right-hand side. The air was warm despite two of the windows being open; a single conditioner thrummed loudly.

  Detective Inspector Vernon Langley was in his late forties. He was almost a head smaller than Greg, and his dark hair had nearly vanished, leaving a shiny brown pate. He was sitting behind a desk at the head of the room, jacket draped over the back of his chair, mauve tie loosened, buttons on his white shirt straining slightly, looking about seven kilos overweight.

  The desk was littered in printouts, folders, thumb-sized cylindrical memox crystals, and sheets of handwritten notes. Langley was typing on an English Electric terminal. The model was a decade out of date, and pretty inferior even when it was new. English Electric had been a nationalized conglomerate formed by the PSP, a shotgun marriage between a dozen disparate ‘ware companies. Only government offices used to buy their equipment, everyone else went to black-market spivs for up-to-date foreign gear.

  He stood up to greet them, wincing slightly, one hand rubbing the stiffness from his back as he rose. He had obviously been working close to his limit on the Kitchener case: his face was lined, there was a five o’clock shadow on his chin. Greg felt exhausted just looking at him.

  “I wasn’t informed that there would be two of you,” he said as he shook hands with Eleanor.

  “I act as Greg’s assistant,” Eleanor said levelly. “I am also his wife.”

  Vernon Langley nodded reluctantly as he sat back down again. “All right, I’m certainly not going to make an issue of it. Find yourself a seat, please.”

  Greg drew up a couple of plain wooden chairs. At a second nod from Vernon, Amanda Paterson left them to go and sit at a desk next to the other three detectives. The four of them put their heads together, talking in low tones.

  Greg was tempted to use his gland there and then, but he guessed the only emotion in the room would be resentment. They had all been working hard on an important case, under an immense, and very public, burden to produce quick results, now some civilian glamour-merchant had been brought in over their heads because of political pressure. He knew the feeling of frustration well enough, army brass had worked according to no known principles of logic.

  “The Home Office called me at home this morning,” Langley said. “Apparently you have been drafted in to act as my special adviser on this case. Officially, that is. Unofficially, it was made fucking clear you are now in charge. Would you mind telling me why that is, Mandel?” The lack of any inflection was far more telling than any bitterness or anger.

  “I am ex-Mindstar,” Greg said deferent
ially. “My gland gives me an empathic ability, I know when people are lying. Somebody once described me as a truthflnder.”

  “A truthfinder? Is that so? I’ve heard you spent a lot of time in Peterborough after Mindstar was demobbed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They say you killed fifty People’s Constables.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Langley’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  Greg couldn’t resist it. “More like eighty,”

  The detective grunted. “Had a lot of experience solving murders, have you, Mandel?”

  “No. None at all.”

  “Twenty-three years I’ve been in the force now. I even stuck it out in the PSP years.” He waved a hand airily as Eleanor shifted uncomfortably. “Oh, don’t worry, Mrs Mandel, the Inquisitors cleared me of any complicity with the Party. That’s why I was posted here from Grantham, a lot of Oakham’s officers failed that particular test. Not politically sound, you see. Well, not as far as this government is concerned.”

  “I wonder if Edward Kitchener cares what political colour the investigating officers are,” Eleanor said.

  Langley gave her a long look, then sighed in defeat. “You’re quite right, of course, Mrs Mandel. Please excuse me. I have spent the last four days and nights trying to find this maniac. And for all my efforts, I have got exactly nowhere. So tempers in this office are likely to be a little frayed this morning. I apologize in advance for any sharp answers you may receive. Nothing personal.”

  “I didn’t know the Home Office had told you I was in charge,” Greg said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s still your investigation. I really am just a specialist.”

  “Sure, thanks,” said Langley.

  Greg decided to press on. It was obvious there wouldn’t be the usual small talk, the getting-to-know-you session. He’d just have to do what he could. “The press reports said Kitchener was butchered, is that true?”

  “Yes. If I didn’t know better I’d say it was a ritualistic killing. Satan worship, a pagan sacrifice, something like that. It was utter barbarism. His chest was split open, lungs spread out on either side of his head. We have holograms if you want an in situ review.”

  “Not at the moment,” Greg said. “Why would anybody go to that much trouble?”

  Langley gestured emptily. “Who knows? I meet some evil bastards in this job. But Kitchener’s murderer is beyond me, that kind of mind is in a class of its own. Nobody knows what makes someone like that tick. To be honest, it frightens me, the fact that they can walk around pretending to be human for ninety-nine per cent of the time. I suppose you can spot one straight off?”

  “Maybe,” Greg said. “If I knew what to look for.”

  “Whoever he is, he’s not entirely original. It was a copy-cat method.”

  “Copy cat?”

  “This spreading the lungs gimmick; Liam Bursken used to do it.”

  Greg frowned, the name was familiar.

  “He was a serial killer, wasn’t he?” Eleanor said.

  “That’s right, he roamed Newark picking people at random off the streets then butchering them. The press called him the Viking. He murdered eleven victims in five months. But that was six years ago. Now he really was psychopathic, a total loon. Newark was like a city under siege until he was caught. People refused to go out after dusk. There were vigilante groups patrolling the streets, fighting with People’s Constables. Nasty business.”

  “Where is he now?” Greg asked.

  “HMP Stocken Hall, the Clinical Detention Centre where they keep the really dangerous cases. Locked away in the maximum security wing for the rest of time.”

  “That’s close,” Greg murmured. He conjured up a mental map of the area. Stocken Hall was only about fifteen kilometres from Launde Abbey as the crow flies.

  “Give me some credit. I did check, Mandel. Bursken was there four nights ago. They won’t even take him out of the Centre if he gets ill; the doctors have to visit him.”

  “There is no such thing as coincidence.” Greg smiled apologetically. “OK. It wasn’t Bursken. You say you haven’t got a suspect yet? Surely you must have some idea.”

  “None at all.” The detective slumped further back into his chair. “Embarrassing for us, really. Considering there are only six possible culprits. A neat solution, somebody we could charge quickly, would have been the best thing that could have happened to this station. Not the town’s favourite sons, we are.” He flicked a finger at Amanda Paterson. “And daughters, of course. As it is, I can’t even go outside to that pack of jackals and say I hope to make an arrest in the near future.”

  “Who are the six possibles?”

  “Kitchener’s students. And a bigger bunch of wallies you’ve never seen; bright kids, but they’re plugged into some other universe the whole time. Typical student types, naive and fashionably rebellious. They were the only ones in Launde Abbey at the time. The Abbey’s security system memory showed no one else sneaked in, and it’s all top-grade gear. But I’m not just relying on that as evidence. It was a nasty storm the night Kitchener was murdered, remember?”

  “Yeah,” Greg said. He remembered the day of Roy Collister’s lynch mob.

  Langley climbed to his feet, and went over to the big flatscreen on the rear wall. “Jon Nevin will show you what I mean. He’s been checking out all the possible access routes to the Abbey.”

  One of the other detectives stood up; in his late twenties, thinning black hair shaved close, a narrow face with a long nose that had been broken at some time. He made an effort to rein back on his hostility as Greg and Eleanor trailed after Langley.

  The map was centred on Launde Park, an irregular patch coloured a phosphorescent pink. A tall column of seven-digit numbers had been superimposed alongside. From the scale, Greg judged the park had an area of about a square kilometre; he hadn’t quite realized how remote it was, situated half-way up the side of the Chater valley. A lone road bisecting the valley was its only link with the outside world.

  Nevin tapped a finger on the little black rectangle which represented the Abbey. His face registered total uninterest. If he’d still been in the army, Greg would have called it dumb insolence.

  “Because of its isolated position we don’t believe anyone could have got to Launde Abbey at any time after six o’clock last Thursday afternoon,” Nevin recited in a dull tone.

  “What time was Kitchener killed?” Greg asked.

  “Approximately four-thirty on Friday morning,” Langley said. “Give or take fifteen minutes. Certainly not before four.”

  “The storm arrived at Launde Abbey at about five p.m. On Thursday,” Nevin said. His hand traced northwards along the road outside the Abbey. “We estimate the bridge over the River Chater was submerged by six, completely unpassable. The rainfall was very heavy around here, fifteen centimetres according to the meteorological office at RAP Cottesmore.

  Basically, that bridge is just a couple of big concrete-pipe sections with earth and stone shovelled on top; it’s a very minor road, even by the last century’s standards.

  “That just leaves us the route to the south. The road goes up over the brow of the valley, and into Loddington; but there is a fork just outside Loddington which leads away to Belton. So in order to get on to the road to Launde you have to go through either Loddington or Belton.”

  Greg studied the villages; they were tiny, smaller than Hambleton. Long columns of code numbers were strung out beside them. He could see where Nevin was leading. They were small insular farming communities, and anything out of the ordinary-strangers, unknown vehicles-would become a talking-point for weeks. He pointed to the thin roads that led to Launde Park. “What sort of condition are these roads in?” he asked.

  “The map is deceptive,” Nevin admitted. He swept his hand over the web of yellow lines covering the land to the west of Oakham; it was a bleak stretch of countryside, furrowed with twisting valleys and steeply rounded hills. A few lonely farmhouses were dotted about, snug in the le
e of depressions. “All these minor roads are down to farm tracks in most places. Some stretches are completely overgrown, you have to be a local to know where to drive.”

  “And you’re saying nobody went through Loddington or Belton after six o’clock on Thursday?” Eleanor asked.

  “That’s right, there wasn’t even any local traffic,” Jon Nevin said. “Everybody was battened down before the storm began. We did a house-to-house enquiry in both Loddington and Belton.” He pointed at the columns of numbers. “These are our file codes for the statements; you can review them if you want, we interviewed everybody. You see, the streets in both villages are very narrow, and if any vehicle had gone through the residents would have known.”

  Eleanor shrugged acceptance, and gave him a warm smile. The detective couldn’t maintain his air of indifference under those circumstances. Greg pretended not to notice.

  Langley went and sat behind the nearest desk, hooking an arm over the back of the chair. “In any case, the important thing is, we know for a fact that nobody came out of the valley between six o’clock Thursday evening and six o’clock Friday morning. The murderer was there when we arrived.”

  “How do you figure that?” Greg asked.

  “The Chater bridge was still under water until midday Friday. That just leaves the south road again. If you were coming out of the valley, you had to use it.

  “The students called us from the Abbey at five-forty on Friday morning. It was Jon here and a couple of uniforms who responded. They took a car down to the Abbey just after six.”