The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “You know where it was grown?”

  “Yes. The vat in the lab. Everybody knew that.”

  “Thank you. Did you use the Bendix that night?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know its management program codes?”

  “No, not offhand, but they’re all stored in the operations file. We all have access to that. Kitchener trusted us not to do anything stupid; we’re all ‘ware literate.”

  “What about the datanet; did you use it on Thursday, plug into a ‘ware system outside the Abbey?”

  “No.”

  Liz Foxton, Greg decided, was the kind of girl who was always open to other people’s problems. To say that she was motherly would be unfair, she had a steely reserve, a no-nonsense practicality, but in addition there was a definite aura of reassurance about her. Even he felt less disquieted about this interview.

  “I’ve been told you don’t get on well with Rosette Harding-Clarke; is that true?” he asked.

  “I don’t dislike her,” Liz said defensively. “There is no percentage in grudges, not when you have to spend a whole year cooped up in the same house together. I understand her perfectly; I’m just unhappy with her, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “She made a pass at Uri. More than one, actually. He turned her down each time.”

  “I see. What time did you get to sleep last Thursday night?”

  “About two o’clock. I was watching the Globecast news channel. I was so happy about Scotland. Now this.”

  “I understand you were, um, active at three o’clock Friday morning. Did you hear or see anything unusual at that time?”

  “No. There was just us.”

  “Was the flatscreen showing the newscasts at that time?”

  “Yes. I’d fallen asleep watching it.”

  “What about after three o’clock, did it stay on?”

  “Yes. I watched it for a while. I don’t know how long for, I dozed off again.”

  “And you were woken by Rosette’s screams?”

  “Yes,” she said in a tiny voice.

  “Then you went straight to Kitchener’s bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  Was Uri in the bedroom when you woke up?”

  “Yes! He was out of the door before me, but only by a few seconds.”

  “Do you remember if you arrived at Kitchenen’s bedroom before on after Isabel Spalvas?”

  “Before, I think. She was standing behind me. She caught me. My legs went, you see.” Her eyes filled with. liquid. She blinked furiously, dabbing at them with a handkerchief.

  “I understand,” said Greg. “Just a couple more questions.” He gave Lancaster an admonitory look. “Did you ever take syntho at the Abbey?”

  She sniffed. “Yes, a few times. Three, I think. That was last year, about a month after I arrived. Just to try it. Edward was there to make sure I’d be all right. But that was the last time, Uri has a real bug about it.”

  “And you argued about it?”

  “Yes. So silly.” She gave him a fast plaintive grimace. “You remember the old song? The best part of breaking up, is making up. That’s us.”

  “Right So you must have known that syntho was being cooked up at the Abbey, that there was a vat in the lab?”

  “Yes.”

  Were you using the Bendix on Thursday?”

  “No, I should have been, but Scotland seemed so much more important. I was watching the newscasts for most of the day.”

  “So you didn’t use the datanet either, then?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever sleep with Edward Kitchener?”

  He perceived the answer in her mind, in amidst all the turmoil of guilt, adoration, remorse, and grief. She took a long time to speak. The answer in her earlier statements to the police had been a resolute no.

  “I did once,” she said. “When I first went to Launde. I was lonely. He was kind, sympathetic.”

  “Was that one of the times when you infused syntho?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Does Uri know?”

  “No.” Her head was bowed. “You won’t tell him, will you?”

  “These interviews are strictly confidential,” Greg said. “There’s no need for him to know.”

  She rose slowly from her chair, gratefully accepting the hand Lancaster offered. “Do you know who it was?” she asked.

  “Not yet, no.”

  Isabel Spalvas looked as tired as Greg felt. She was wearing jeans and a baggy mauve sweatshirt, her light fuzzy hair tied back in a pony-tail. Her face had wonderfully dainty features. She would have been very attractive under ordinary circumstances, he guessed, but today her skin was sallow, almost grey, there were red rings round her eyes from crying, slim lips were turned down mournfully. She moved listlessly when she came in, sitting down, showing no real interest in the proceedings. Matthew Slater sat behind her, looking appropriately concerned.

  Greg could sense just how grave her depression was, a bleak distress interwound with every thought. Out of all the students so far, she was easily the most affected by the murder. He would go so far as to say traumatized.

  “I understand you were seeing Edward Kitchener,” Greg said delicately after Langley had started the AV recording.

  She nodded apathetically.

  “You were with him that night?”

  Another nod.

  “What time did you go to him?”

  “Quarter-past one.”

  “Until when?”

  “Half-past two.”

  “So you left Uri’s room about midnight, and stayed in your own room until Rosette arrived, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time did she arrive?”

  “Half-past twelve, I think. She’d been in Cecil’s room. We talked for a while, then we got changed ready for Edward. Rosette is quite fun when she’s relaxed, when she’s not trying to prove something. Don’t get the wrong impression about her, most of that attitude is put on. She can’t help it.”

  “When you left Kitchener’s room, did you see anyone else in the Abbey?”

  “No.”

  “Did you hear anything strange?”

  “No.”

  “What about lights; shining under someone’s door, or downstairs, outside even?”

  “No. Oh, there was a bit of light in Uri’s room. Bluish. I think the flatscreen might have been on. We were watching it in there earlier.”

  “You were taking syntho that night. Had it worn off by then?”

  “Not quite, I was just starting to come down. I don’t-”

  She took a breath, then looked resolutely at the floor. “I don’t like being in there after the boost has gone.”

  “In Kitchener’s bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not?”

  “I get cold. Not physically cold, but it’s hard to face them afterwards. We get so high together, you see; when it comes to sex, Edward and Rosette have lifetimes more experience than me, they made me feel completely free with them. The way a child trusts an adult. His bedroom contained our own private universe, we were safe inside, nothing mattered apart from ourselves and what we wanted. But then when it was over the illusion vanished so quickly. And this shabby old world with all its inbuilt guilt comes flooding back in.” She tugged at a strand of hair, twisting it nervously round and round her index finger. “You must think I’m horrible.”

  “I’m not a judge, Isabel. Your sex life is entirely your own. But I’d like to know why you started going, please?”

  “Rosette started-well it was just hints at first. Joking. Then… I don’t know. Somehow it wasn’t a joke any more. And then I went home for Christmas. There was nothing wrong with that, my family. Except it was sort of pale, lacking substance; I was going through the motions. The Abbey, Edward, we were learning so much there, learning how to think, how to question. It was so much more real. Colour, that’s what Launde had. I was glad to get back. I wanted more of it
, more of the adventure. They offered me that.”

  “Cecil said you were unhappy.”

  “Not really. It’s peculiar, what I was doing, so far outside my norm. Edward called it walking the boundaries of the mind. I had trouble adapting to the affair at first; when I was with Edward and Rosette it didn’t matter at all, it was just outside, afterwards, when it seemed wrong, or stupid, or both. I was going to them more frequently, and staying longer too. But that wasn’t the answer, not shutting myself away with them. Talking about it to someone who understood helped me. Cecil was the only one I could really go to. Cecil is worldly wise, or so he claims. He sympathized in a funny sort of way, and he didn’t criticize. That meant a lot to me.”

  “Did you know Rosette was pregnant?”

  Isabel’s head came up, her blue eyes full of melancholy. There was no resentment in her mind, which was what he actually wanted to know. No grudge. He didn’t think a gentle soul like Isabel could hold a grudge.

  “Yes,” Isabel said. “She never said. But I knew. I’m glad in a way, certainly now. It means there will be something of Edward left. I almost wish it was me.”

  “How about Kitchener, what sort of mood was he in that night?”

  “Edward? Happy. Rosette and me… I… It was good that night.”

  “No, apart from that. His general mood that night, over the last few days. Was he preoccupied at all? Worried about something? Agitated?”

  “No.” She gave him a brave little smile. “You don’t know Edward or you wouldn’t even have asked. He pretended to be this awful old monster. But it was all a sham. Oh, he’d shout at us if we were blatantly stupid. And politicians infuriated him. Apart from that, he didn’t have any worries. That was part of the attraction, I’ve never met anyone so carefree. He’d done so much in his lifetime, won so many battles. I don’t think anything could upset him any more.”

  “I have to ask this, Isabel: how do you feel about Nicholas Beswick?”

  “Oh, God!” She buried her face in her hands. “Why did he have to come out and see us? He’s so sweet. I didn’t want to hurt him. Really. Why did any of this happen? What did we do?”

  Slater patted her gently, but she shrugged him off. He shot a silent appeal at Greg.

  Greg waited until she finished screwing tears from her eyes with damp knuckles.

  “Were you the last to reach Kitchener’s bedroom after Rosette discovered the body?” he asked, feeling a prize turd for pressing the anguished girl.

  “Yes. I think so. They were all ahead of me. I don’t remember much. I’m sorry.”

  “No matter. Before then, after Nicholas had found you and Rosette together in the corridor, did you tell Kitchener he had seen you?”

  “No. God, I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to do about that. Even Rosette was upset. Edward had a real soft spot for Nick, he had such high hopes for him. Nick has a very high IQ and he wants to learn, I mean really wants. The whole universe is a glorious puzzle to Nick. That’s the only time he ever comes out of his shell; when we’re talking about the everyday things like the channels or politics he sits quietly in the corner; but say anything about Grand Unification or quantum mechanics and you can’t shut him up. He’s lovely like that, so animated. I’m rambling, sorry.”

  “Did you and Rosette discuss what to do about Nicholas seeing you?”

  “Not much. It was a sort of mutual silence. I made up my mind to go and see Nick in the morning. Really I was. I would have tried to explain. He was about the one person I would have given Edward up for. I looked after I left Edward, but Nick’s light was out. And anyway, it wouldn’t have been right, not going in straight afterwards. That would have seemed like Edward had total priority on me. But then…”

  “Nicholas Beswick’s light was off at two-thirty? You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes.”

  When did you wash that night?”

  “I had a shower before I started getting our supper ready, then I had another after I left Edward.”

  Were you using the Bendix at all on Thursday?”

  “Yes, most of the afternoon.”

  “Did you access any external ‘ware systems?”

  “No.”

  The last question slid from his cybofax’s little screen. He couldn’t think of any more. Isabel already looked like he’d physically wrung the answers from her.

  It was raining outside again, big warm drops beating incessantly on the high window.

  “OK,” he told Vernon. “Let’s have Nicholas Beswick in.”

  CHAPTER 8

  It was raining over Peterborough again. Sheet lightning sizzled through the covering of low cloud, highlighting the new tower blocks which stood on the high ground to the west; austere monoliths looking down on the organic clutter of the smaller buildings in the city’s original districts.

  Julia hated flying in thunderstorms. Her Dornier tilt-fan might have every safety system in existence built in, but it seemed so insignificant compared to the power outside.

  Another flash burst over the city. Glossy roof-top solar panels bounced some of the light back up at her, leaving tiny purple dazzle spots on her retinas. She had seen the Event Horizon headquarters building dead ahead, a seventeen storey cube of glass, steel, and composite panels. There was nothing elegant about it, thrown up in twenty-six frantic months so that it could accommodate the droves of head office data shufflers necessary to manage a company of Event Horizon’s size, as well as Morgan’s security staff. A monument to haste and functionalism. Its replacement out at Prior’s Pen would be far more aesthetic; the architects had come up with a white and gold cylinder which, with its panoply of pillars and arches, resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Only straight this time, of course. Event Horizon didn’t build crooked.

  She poured herself a chilled mineral water from the bar, and switched the bulkhead flatsereen on, flicking through the channels until she came to the Northwest Europe Broadcast Company. Jakki Coleman was on, a middle-aged woman with iron-cast gold-blonde hair, wearing a stylish mint-green satin jacket. She was sitting behind a Florentine desk in the luxurious study of some mansion.

  Julia grinned gamely as she sprawled back on the white-leather settee, propping her feet up on the chair opposite.

  Jakki Coleman was the queen of the gossipcasts; rock stars, channel celebrities, aristocrats, sports personalities, politicians, she shafted them all.

  “Pauline Harrington, the devoutly Catholic songstress, seems to have mislaid her religious scruples,” Jakki said, her French accent rich and purring. “At least for this weekend. For whom should I see but the delightful Pauline, who is at number five with “My Real Man” in this week’s white soul chart, with none other than Keran Bennion, number one driver for the Porsche team.”

  The image cut to a picture of Pauline and Keran walking through the grounds of a country hotel, somewhere where the sun was shining. They were hand in hand, oblivious of the fountains playing in stone-lined ponds around them, in the background bushes blazed with big tangerine blooms. The recording had obviously been made with a telephoto lens, outlines were slightly fuzzy.

  “Perhaps Keran’s wife sent him for singing lessons,” Jakki suggested smugly. “The three days they spent together should certainly have got his voice in trim.”

  A swarthy young male in a purple and black Versace suit walked into the office and put a sheet of paper in front of Jakki. She read it and ‘Ohooed’ delightedly. Well, fancy that,” she said.

  The item was about a Swiss minister and her toyboy. After that was one about a music biz payola racket.

  Julia took a sip of the mineral water, then noticed her boots. They were crusted with mud from the tower site. She tried rubbing at them with a tissue as Jakki stage whispered that certain pointed questions were being asked about a countess’s new-born son, apparently the count was absent the night of the conception.

  Julia chortled to herself. It was the set she moved in which featured in the ‘cast, Europe’s financial, poli
tical, and glamour elite; snobbish, pretentious, corrupt, yet forever projecting the image of angels. And she had to deal with them on that level, the great pretence, all part of the grand game. So it was a joy to watch Jakki spotlighting their failings, taking a machete to their egos; a kind of second-hand revenge for all the false courtesies she had to extend, the interminable flatteries.

  “The big event in England yesterday was the Event Horizon spaceplane roll out,” Jakki said. “Simply anybody who is anybody was there, including little moi.”

  Julia held her breath. Surely Jakki wasn’t going to lampoon the Prince’s haircut? Not again?

  “And I can tell you several self-proclaimed celebrities were left outside explaining rather tiresomely that their invitations had been squirted to their holiday houses by mistake,” Jakki gushed maliciously. “But leaving behind the nonentities, we enter the interesting zone. Appropriately for an event so large, and très prestigious, it boasted the greatest laugh of the day.” Oh, dear Lord, it was going to be the Prince: “Mega, mega-wealthy Julia Evans has spent a rumoured three and a quarter billion pounds New Sterling on developing the sleek machine intended to spearhead England’s economic reconstruction.”

  Julia scowled. Where had Jakki got that estimate from? It was alarmingly close to the real one. Not another leak in the finance division, please!

  The flatscreen image switched to the roll out ceremony, showing her escorting the Prince and the Prime Minister around the spaceplane.

  “Unfortunately,” Jakki continued, ‘these daunting design costs must have left poor dear Julia’s cupboard quite bare. Because, as you can see, her otherwise enviably slim figure was clad in what looks to me like a big Valentine’s Day chocolate-box wrapper.”

  The Dornier landed on the raised pad at the centre of the headquarters building’s roof. Caroline Rothman held a broad golfing umbrella over Julia as they made their way to the stairwell door. Rachel and Ben marched alongside. Nobody was looking at her. It could have been coincidence. But then they had all been incredibly busy when she came out of the tilt fan’s rear lounge as well.

  Be honest, girl, she told herself, stomping out of the lounge. That bitchsluthussy!