The Mandel Files

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The Centre’s interview room was slightly more hospitable than the one at Oakham police station. Greg imagined it had been patterned from a conference room at a two-star hotel, cheap but well meaning. The table was a cream-coloured oval with five comfortable sandy-red chairs around it, almost like a dining room arrangement; certainly the confrontational element was absent. It was on the ground floor and a picture window ran the length of one wall, looking out on the patio garden which filled the building’s central well. Conifers and heathers were growing in raised brick borders, tended by a working party of inmates under the watchful eyes of warders; there were several wooden park benches with inmates sitting and reading, or just soaking up the unexpected bonus of sunlight. They all had a blue stripe on their uniform sleeve.

  Two guards brought Liam Bursken in. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, five or six centimetres shorter than Greg, but powerfully built, with broad sloping shoulders; his shaved skull had a slightly bluish sheen from the stubble, giving the impression of a long gaunt face. The neural jammer collar was tight enough to pinch his skin, Greg could see it was rubbing red around the edges. Sober, almost mournful, emerald eyes found Greg, and regarded him intently. There was a red stripe on his yellow uniform sleeve.

  He sat down slowly, his joints moving with the kind of stiffness Greg associated with the elderly. The guards remained standing behind him, one with his hand in his pocket. Fingering the collar activator, Greg guessed.

  He ordered a secretion from his gland. The four minds in the room slithered across his expanding perception boundary, their thought currents forming a constellation of surreal moire-patterns. Both guards were nervous, while Stephanie Rowe by contrast displayed a cool detached interest. Liam Bursken’s thoughts were more enigmatic. Greg had been expecting the ragged fractures of dysfunction, like a junkie who simply cannot rationalize, but instead there was only calmness, a conviction of supreme righteousness. Bursken’s self-assurance touched on megalomania. And there was no sense of humour. None. Bursken had been robbed of that most basic human trait. It was what unnerved people about him, Greg realized, they could all sense it at a subconscious level. He wondered if he should tell Stephanie, help her understand the man.

  He put his cybofax on the table, and keyed in the file of questions he’d prepared. “My name is Greg Mandel.”

  “Psychic,” Liam Bursken said. “Ex of the Mindstar Brigade. Adviser to Oakham CID in the murder of Edward Kitchener. Strongly suspected to have been appointed at the insistence of Julia Evans.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Though you can’t believe everything you see on the channels. So, Liam, Stephanie here tells me you’ve been following the Kitchener case with some interest.”

  “Yes.”

  Greg realized Bursken was neither being deliberately rude, nor trying to irritate him. Facts, that was all the man was concerned with. There would be no garrulous ingratiation here, none of the usual rapport. Stephanie had been right, Bursken was utterly insane; Greg wasn’t entirely sure he could be labelled human.

  “I would like to ask you some questions, do you mind?”

  “Any objection would be irrelevant. You would simply take your answers.”

  “Then I’ll ask them, shall I?”

  There was no response. Greg began to wonder if he could spot a lie in a mind as eerily distorted as the one facing him.

  “How old are you, Liam?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “Where did you live while you carried out your murders?”

  “Newark.”

  “How many people did you kill?”

  “Eleven.”

  Greg let out a tiny breath of relief. Liam Bursken wasn’t attempting to evade, giving his answers direct. That meant he would be able to spot any attempts to scramble round for fictitious answers. Even a total mental freak couldn’t escape the good old Mandel thumbscrews. He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or not. To comprehend insanity did you have to be a little insane yourself? But then who in his right mind would have a gland implanted in the first place?

  He noticed the wave of hatred washing through Bursken’s mind, and clamped down on his errant smile.

  “Where were you when Edward Kitchener was killed, Liam?”

  “Here.”

  True.

  “Have you ever been out of Stocken?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever tried to get out?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to get out?”

  Bursken demurred for a moment. Then: “I would like to leave.”

  “Do you think you deserve to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you have done anything wrong?”

  “I have done as I was bidden, no more.”

  “God told you to kill?”

  “I was the instrument chosen by our Lord.”

  “To eliminate sin?”

  “Yes.”

  “What sin did Sarah Inglis commit?” The personal profile his cybofax displayed said Sarah was eleven years old, snatched on her way home from school.

  “Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.”

  “She was a schoolgirl.” It was unprofessional, he knew, but for once didn’t care. Anything which could hurt Bursken, from inducing pangs of conscience to a knee in the balls, couldn’t be all bad.

  “Our Lord cannot be held accountable.”

  “Yeah, right. What do you know about Edward Kitchener?”

  “Physicist. Double Nobel laureate. Lived at Launde Abbey. Advances many controversial theories. Adulterer. Degenerate. Blasphemer.”

  “Why blasphemer?”

  “Physicists seek to define the universe, to eliminate uncertainty and with it spirituality. They seek to banish God. They say there is no room for God in their theories. That is the devil speaking.”

  “So that would qualify Kitchener as a legitimate victim for the justice you dispense?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you had been allowed out of Stocken would you have killed him?”

  “I would have redeemed him with the sacrifice of life. He would have been blessed, and thanked me as he knelt at our Lord’s feet.”

  “Would this redemption involve mutilating him?”

  “I would leave behind a sign for the Angels of the Lord to help with his ascension into heaven.”

  “What sign?”

  “Given him the shape of an angel.”

  “It’s the lungs,” Stephanie said. “if you look down directly on the body, the lungs spread out on either side represent wings, like an angel. Liam did it to all his victims. The Vikings used to do something similar when they came over pillaging.”

  “I’m sure they did,” Greg muttered. He keyed up the next series of questions on the cybofax.

  “OK, you know Kitchener lives at Launde Abbey, and you know there is a kitchen there. Would you take your own knife?”

  “The Lord always provides.”

  “Does he provide from Launde’s kitchen, or does he provide beforehand?”

  “Beforehand,” Bursken whispered thickly.

  Stephanie leant over to him, an apologetic smile on her lips. “What are you getting at?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Assembling a profile of the mind involved. Whoever did it has to have something in common with Bursken here. It wasn’t an ordinary tekmerc, even they would baulk at performing that atrocity. It must be someone whose normal emotional responses have been eradicated, like Bursken.

  “What I want to know is how rationally can they function under these circumstances, if they were following a plan, could they stick to it? Sheer revulsion would cause most ordinary minds to crack under the stress, mistakes could be made. So far this investigation hasn’t uncovered a single one.”

  “I see.” She flopped back in her chair again.

  “Which would be more important to the Lord,” Greg asked: “redeeming Kitchener, or destroying the computer records of all his blasphemous work?”

&nbs
p; “You mock me, Mandel. You speak of the Lord, yet you carry no reverence in your heart. You speak of blasphemy, and you revel in its execution.”

  “Which would you prefer to do, kill Kitchener, or erase his work?”

  “A computer is a tool, it can be used or misused. In itself it is unimportant.”

  “Secondary then, but knocking it out would be a good idea, you would try and do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you ever nervous when you murdered those people in Newark?”

  Bursken’s throat muscles tightened, his thought currents spasmed heavily, thrashing about like wrestling snakes. Loathing predominated.

  Greg allowed a smile to play on his lips. “You were, weren’t you? You were frightened, trembling like a leaf.”

  “Of being discovered,” Bursken spat. “Of being stopped.”

  “Did you take precautions? Did you clean up afterwards.”

  “The Lord is no fool.”

  “You followed his instructions?”

  “Yes.”

  “To the letter? Right afterwards, I mean the minute after you had spread those lungs, you would start cleaning up?”

  “Yes.”

  “No hesitation? No gloating?”

  “None.”

  “During, what about during? Did you take care then?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was hard work, bloody work, and there was always the danger someone might stumble in on you. The fear. You’re seriously telling me your concentration never wavered?”

  “Never,” Bursken said gleefully. “The Lord cleansed me of mortal weaknesses for my task. My thoughts remained pure.”

  “Every single time?”

  “Every single time!”

  “The police found some skin under Oliver Powell’s fingernails. Your skin. You missed that, didn’t you?”

  “They lied. There was no skin. Powell was struck from behind. He cried out but once before I silenced him. A plea. In his heart he knew his sin, he did not attempt to thwart the Lord’s justice.”

  Greg could read it from his mind, the supreme pride in what he had done. The glowing sense of accomplishment, a kind Greg had encountered before in sports tournament winners, someone receiving favourable exam results. Healthy dignity. “Jesus!” Stupefaction pushed Greg back in his chair.

  Staring in bewilderment at the creature opposite, it had flesh and blood and bone, but that wasn’t enough to make it human, nowhere near. “He’s not fucking real.”

  Stephanie exchanged an embarrassed glance with one of the guards and made a cutting motion across her throat.

  “Was there anything else, Greg?” she asked.

  Greg shut down his gland secretion. Defeated, soiled and shamed by having been privy to Bursken’s thoughts. “No. Absolutely nothing.”

  The lunatic sneered contemptuously as the guards led him away.

  CHAPTER 14

  Julia’s Rolls-Royce passed under a broad stone arch, watched by a pair of silent moss-laden griffins perched on either side. The wrought-iron gates swung shut as the car sped down the long gravel drive.

  Even with the new year’s punishing weather, Wilholm’s grounds were maintained in pristine condition. Formally arranged flowerbeds alternated with cherry trees along the side of the drive. Broad lawns dotted with dumpy cycads rolled away to a border of glossy shrubs; behind them a thick rank of Brazilian rosewoods completed the shield against prying eyes. The Nene was a couple of kilometres away to the south-east. In the summer she could look out of the manor’s second-storey windows and watch the little sailing boats cruising up and down the river, dreaming of the freedom they possessed. But this time of year always saw the valley floor flooded by the monsoon rains, the boats safe on dry land. The water was deeper each year as more and more soil was washed away by the powerful current. Further down, between the Al and the tail end of the Ferry Meadows estuary, it became a permanent salt marsh, fetid and unfertile.

  But the secluded Wilholm estate remained a passive refuge, protected from environmental ravages by a wall of her money, changeless apart from the spectacular cycle of flowers which varied from month to month. Philip Evans had bought it as soon as he returned to England, paying off the communal farmers who had occupied it under the PSP’s auspices. Landscape teams had laboured for months, returning it to its former splendour. Actually, it was probably a lot better than it used to be, she suspected, especially after she saw how much it had cost. Grandpa hadn’t cared, he wanted elegance, and by God that’s what he got.

  It was worthwhile, though. Wilholm was easy on the eye, time flowed just that fraction slower across its trim lawns and through the sumptuous interior. The fact that she never, but never, used it for business of any kind helped strengthen the sensation of relief she always experienced when she crossed that invisible, and ultra-secure, threshold. Wilholm was for parties and lovers and friends. Today counted as friends, the Kitchener case was too intriguing to be classed as work.

  She pursed her lips in self-chastisement; calling the murder intriguing in front of Cormac Ranasfari would never do.

  Royan Access Request.

  Expedite, she told the nodes.

  Hi, Snowy.

  She grinned broadly. On the jump seat opposite, Rachel gave her an expectant look then went back to the view across the lawn. A black-furred gene-tailored sentinel panther was just visible loping along the grass in front of the shrubs.

  Royan was the only person to call her that. It was her middle name, Snowflower, bestowed by the American desert cult with which she had spent her childhood. She never used it, but there was no unit of data on the planet Royan couldn’t access.

  Hello to you, she answered. Talking to Royan was always a real opiate. He had taught her all sorts of programming tricks.

  Thanks to him she could write better hotrod software than half of England’s professional hackers. She wasn’t sure what he got in return, probably just the satisfaction of having someone outside his concrete eyrie who would listen. That and the fact she was the Julia Evans. Whatever, they had been firm friends ever since Greg’s first Event Horizon case. He was another of those rare people who was honest with her.

  Eleanor has been to see me.

  I don’t know. All these girlfriends.

  I like Eleanor.

  All you men like Eleanor.

  Jealous jealous jealous. Is what you are.

  Certainly am, all I’ve got is money.

  How is Patrick?

  Fine, I suppose.

  Oh, Snowy, you haven’t finished with him already? You Only met him five weeks ago.

  Don’t you start, I get quite enough of that from Grandpa and Morgan and Greg.

  They care. I care, Snowy. It’s nice to have people who care.

  Yah.

  I saw you on the channels this morning.

  Did you now?

  Yes yes yes. Would you like me to put out a snuff contract on Jakki Coleman?

  I would truly love you to put out a snuff contract on that bitch.

  Really?

  The only trouble is, everyone would know I was behind it. Lord, I hope nothing does happen to her! I never thought of that before. The way conspiracy theories are flying round at the moment…

  Guilty guilty guilty. Chuckle. Serves you right.

  Yes. Well, you would spring me from jail, wouldn’t you?,

  For a price.

  Thanks a bunch, some friend you are.

  Seriously, I could glitch her ‘cast something chronic. How about superimposing a blue AV recording? Give the porno starlet her face.

  Julia had to rub her hand over her mouth to stifle the laugh. Rachel didn’t look this time, she had probably guessed what was going on.

  Don’t tempt me! Julia implored. I’ll get that Coleman slag, one day. You see if I don’t. It won’t be public, but she’ll know and I’ll know. And thats what truly counts.

  Let me know if you need a hand.

  Yes, I will. Thanks.

  I�
�ve been going through the Launde Abbey security ‘ware for Greg and Eleanor.

  Yes, and…?

  You were really looking out for Kitchener, weren’t you?

  Not me, I didn’t even know a thing about him until two days ago. Apparently Cormac Ranasfari insisted on upgrading the security at the Abbey. He’s always been concerned that Kitchener didn’t have adequate protection, and this was a perfect opportunity to insist.

  Oh. Well, that security system your people installed is top grade. The guardian bytes are hot hot hot stuff.

  You can’t melt through?

  Didn’t say that. I could. And possibly another five or six people in the country could. But its tough.

  Oh, so that takes the tekmerc penetration mission out of the possible, and into the improbable.

  Looks like it.

  Thanks for telling me. Do you want to sit in on the conference?

  Yes yes yes.

  Wilholm itself was a splendid eighteenth-century manor house. A broad grey stone façade with pink and yellow roses climbing the sturdy trelliswork on either side of the overhanging portico. The long windows were fitted with silvered glass against the heat. Julia saw a hundred tiny reflections of herself climbing out of the Rolls. Lucas, her butler, was walking down the steps to greet her.

  There were a couple of other cars parked outside. Morgan’s caramel-coloured Rover and a cobalt-blue Ford which she guessed was Ranasfari’s.

  “A pleasant morning, ma’am?” Lucas asked. He was in his mid-sixties, wearing a tailcoat with bright brass buttons, wonderfully dignified. The PSP had kept him on the dole for ten years, saying personal service was a humiliating anachronism, and they’d find him proper employment. The day after Philip Evans bought Wilholm he had cycled out from Peterborough and asked for a job. The manor functioned so smoothly under his supervision; and he’d never attended corporate management-training courses.

  She handed him her raincoat and boater. “Let’s say, I covered a lot of ground.”

  He inclined his head. “Yes, ma’am. Mr and Mrs Mandel have just passed the gatehouse, they will be here shortly.”

  “Great. Show them up to the study as soon as they arrive.” She raced up the steps and through the big double doors. Most of her major friends together, working on a problem, and including her. It looked like being a great afternoon.