A Quantum Murder

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The original buildings of HMP Stocken Hall were still virtually intact, a regimented complex of stolid cell blocks squatting behind the five-metre perimeter fence topped with razor wire. Solar panels had been added to the south-facing walls, although they only came up to the bottom of the second-storey windows, leaving a band of ginger brickwork free. The tall concrete-segment chimney of the old utility building was swathed in dark ivy, abandoned now, the machinery it served rusted beyond repair. Solar water-heaters had been set up on the flat roofs, like giant silver flowers with long tubular midnight-black stamens.

Greg could see work parties tending the vegetable plots inside the fence, men in grey one-piece uniforms lethargically scratching at the waterlogged soil with rakes and hoes. Prisons were officially responsible for producing fifty per cent of their own foodstuff, though the actual figure was often much higher. Grow it, or go hungry. A concept which the PSP had introduced, and the New Conservatives saw no need to alter. Dismay at the idea of prisoners sitting unproductively in their cells for twenty-two hours a day was something both sides of the political divide shared, especially when Treasury funds were scarce.

He drove past the first set of large gates in the fence. The land around was rumpled with low rolling hillocks and gentle dells, meadows, and beanfields cluttered with the spindly grey sentries of dead trees which marked the line of old hedgerows. A couple of largish woods to the north had that verdant shine which betrayed the new vine species establishing themselves on the bones of the past.

Stocken Hall itself straddled a rise east of the A1 just north of Stretton village, a fifteen-minute drive from Hambleton.

He had taken the Jaguar; the car had been a present from Julia two Christmases ago. It was a powerful streamlined vehicle which looked as if it had been milled from a single block of olive-green metal. He always felt incredibly self-conscious driving it, and Eleanor was no better, which was why it stayed in the barn eleven months of the year. But he had to admit in this instance the image of professional respectability it fostered was probably going to be useful.

The second gate was the one he wanted; two red and white pole barriers, with metal one-way flaps in the concrete. There was a big steel-blue sign outside which read:

HMP Stocken Hall

Clinical Detention Centre

He stopped in front of the barrier, lowering the window to show his card to the white sensor pillar at the side of the road.

"Entry authorization confirmed, Mr Mandel," the pillar's construct voice said. "Please park in slot seven. Thank you."

The barrier in front of him lifted.

If anything, Stocken's new annexe was even drabber than its older counterparts. The building was a three-storey hexagon, fifty metres to a side, with a broad central well; a metal skeleton overlaid with gunmetal-grey composite panels, three rings of silvered glass spaced equidistantly up its frontage. Modular, factory-built, easy to assemble, cheap, and twice as strong as the traditional brick and cement structures.

He hadn't been expecting such a sophisticated set-up; like most government ministries the Home Office, and therefore its subsidiary the prison service, was currently cash starved.

And even in pre-Warming times, improving prison conditions had never rated highly in MPs' priority lists. Constituents didn't appreciate their tax money being spent on giving criminals a cushy number.

As he drove round to the car park outside the Centre's main entrance he saw another prison party at work in the dead forest at the back of the perimeter fence. Trunks were being felled, then trimmed before they were hauled off to a sawmill set up under a green canvas awning. It was hard work, rain had turned the ground to a quagmire, but even so he was surprised the inmates were allowed chain saws. Stocken was a category A prison.

He hurried over the band of granite chips which encircled the building, discomfort trickling into his veins, as tangible as a gland secretion. Too many of his mates from the Trinities had wound up being sent to places like Stocken in the PSP years, and not all of them had survived transit.

There was another sensor pillar outside the big glass entrance doors. Greg showed his card again. The reception hall had a semicircular desk on one side and a row of plastic chairs lined up opposite. Walls and ceiling were all composite, powder-blue in colour; the linoleum was a marble swirl of grey and cream. Biolum panels were set along the walls, below tracks of boxy service conduits. The place had the same kind of utilitarian lay-out as a warship interior.

That military image was reinforced by the two guards sitting behind the desk; they both wore crisp blue uniforms with peaked caps. One of them took Greg's proffered card and showed it to a terminal. An ID badge burped out of a slot.

"Please wear it on your lapel at all times, sir," he said as he handed it over along with the card.

He was fixing the badge on when one of the doors at the far end of the reception hall opened. The woman who came through was in her late thirties, dark hair cut short without much attempt at styling. Her face had pale skin, slender winged eyebrows, a long nose, and strong lips. She wore a white coat of some shiny material, there was no hint of what clothes might be worn underneath. Her shoes were sensible black leather with a small buckle, flat heels. A cybofax was gripped in her left hand.

"Mr Mandel?" She stuck out her hand.

"Greg, please."

"I'm Stephanie Rowe, Dr MacLennan's assistant. I'll take you to him."

The corridors were windowless, running through the centre of the building. They passed several warders, all in the neat navy-blue uniforms, and always walking in pairs or larger groups. On two occasions they were escorting prisoners. The men had shaven heads, wearing loose-fining yellow overalls, white plastic neural-jammer collars clamped firmly around their necks.

Greg frowned at the retreating back of the second prisoner.

"Are all the prisoners fitted with neural jammers?"

"Yes, all the ones in the Centre. We house some of the country's most ruthless criminals here. I don't mean the gang lords or syntho barons. These are the violence and sex orientated offenders, killers, rapists, and child molesters."

"Right. Do many of them try and escape?"

"No. There were only two attempts in the last twelve months. The collar's incapacitation ability is demonstrated to each inmate as they arrive. Besides, most of them are resigned when they arrive here, depressed, withdrawn. The kind of crimes they commit mean even their families have rejected them. They were loners on the outside, there is nowhere they can go, no organization which will hide and take care of them. It's our experience that a high percentage of them actually wanted to be caught."

"And do you think you can cure them?"

"The term we use now is behavioural reorientation. And yes, we've had some success. There's a lot of work still to be done, naturally."

"What about public acceptance?"

She grimaced in defeat. "Yes, we anticipate a major problem in that area. It would be politically difficult releasing them back into the community after the treatment is complete."

"Was Liam Bursken one of the two who tried to escape?" Greg asked.

"No."

"Has he ever tried?"

"Again, no. He's kept in solitary the whole time. Even by our standards, he's considered extremely dangerous. We cannot allow him to mix with the other inmates. It would cause too much trouble. Most of them would want to attack him simply for the kudos it would bring them."

"No honour amongst thieves any more, eh?"

"These aren't thieves, Greg. They are very sick people."

"Are you a doctor?"

"A psychiatrist, yes."

They climbed a staircase to the second floor. Greg mulled over what she had said. A professional liberal, he decided, she had too much faith in people. Maybe too much faith in her profession as well if she believed therapy could effect complete cures. It couldn't, papering over the cracks was the best anyone could ever hope for, he knew. But then the gland did give him an advantage, allowing him to glimpse the true workings of the mind.

"So why do you want to work here?" he asked as they started off down another corridor.

She gave him a brief grin. "I didn't know I was the one you wanted to question."

"You don't have to answer."

"I don't mind. I'm here because this is the cutting edge of behavioural research, Greg. And the money is good."

"I've never heard anyone say that about civil service pay before."

"I don't work for the government. The Centre was built by the Berkeley company, they run it under licence from the Home Office. And they also fund the behavioural reorientation research project, which is my field."

"That explains a lot. I didn't think the Home Office had the kind of resources to pay for a place like this."

Stephanie shrugged noncommittally, and opened the door into the director's suite. There was a secretary in the outer office, busy with a terminal. She glanced up, and keyed an intercom.

"Go straight through," she said.

The office was at odds with the rest of the Centre. Wall units, desk, and conference table were all customized blackwood, ancient maps and several diplomas hung on the wall, louvre blinds stretched across the picture window, blocking the view, It was definitely a senior management enclave, its occupier claiming every perk and entitlement allowed for in the corporate rule book.

Dr James MacLennan rose from behind his desk to greet Greg, a reassuring smile and a solid handshake. He was thirty-seven, shorter than Greg, with thick dark hair, heavily tanned with compact features. His Brazilian suit was a shiny grey-green.

"For the record, and before we say anything else, I'd like to state quite categorically that Liam Bursken did not slip out for a night, it simply isn't possible," MacLennan said.

His mannerisms were all a trifle too gushy and effusive for Greg to draw any confidence the way he was intended to. He guessed that Berkeley's directors were none too happy at suggestions that psychopaths like Bursken could come and go as they pleased. The method of Kitchener's murder hadn't been lost on the press.

"From what I've seen so far, I'd say the Centre looks pretty secure," Greg said.

"Good, excellent." MacLennan gestured at a long settee.

Greg settled back into the bouncy cushioning. "I will have to ask Bursken himself."

"I understand completely. Stephanie will arrange your interview. Make as many checks as you like. I like to think our record is flawless."

"Thank you, I'm sure it is."

Stephanie leant over the desk and muttered into the intercom, then came and sat at the table next to the settee.

"Right, so how can we help?" MacLennan crossed his legs, and gave Greg his undivided attention.

"As you probably saw in the newscasts, I'm a gland psychic appointed to the Kitchener inquiry by the Home Office."

MacLennan rolled his eyes and grunted. "God, the press. Don't tell me about the press. I've had the lot of them clamouring on the door to interview Bursken, harassing the staff when they come off duty. You see them on the channel 'casts, these packs which follow politicians and royalty around, but I just never appreciated what it was like to be on the receiving end. And that kind of microscopic attention is precisely what we didn't want, Stocken is supposed to be a low-key operation."

"Suppose you fill me in on some background. What exactly is this behavioural reorientation work you're doing here?"

"You know what kind of inmates we hold here?"

"Yeah. That's why I'm so interested in meeting Liam Bursken. I saw the holograms of Kitchener in situ. Tell you, it was plain butchery. I've seen atrocities in battle, and not just committed by the other side. But the kind of mind which perpetrated that was way outside my experience. I want to know what it looks like."

MacLennan nodded sympathetically. "Well, the motivation behind their crimes are basically psychological, in all cases deep-rooted. None of the serial killers sell drugs, or steal, or commit fraud, any of the normal range of criminal activities.

"That sort of everyday crime is mostly a result of sociological conditioning; broadly speaking, solvable if they were given better housing, improved education, a good job, stable home environment, etc. — it's a process for social workers and parole officers—whereas the Centre's inmates probably had those advantages before they came in. They do tend to have reasonable IQs, steady jobs, sometimes even families."

"Do any of them have exceptional IQs?" Greg asked.

MacLennan flicked an enquiring glance at Stephanie Rowe. "Not that I'm aware of," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"Kitchener's students are all very bright people."

"Ah, I see, yes."

"No one here has anything above average intelligence," Stephanie announced; she was studying her cybofax. "Certainly we have no geniuses resident. Do you want me to request past case histories?"

"No, that's all right," Greg said.

"What we are trying to do at Stocken," MacLennan said, "is alter their psychological profiles, eradicate that part of their nature which extracts gratification from performing these barbaric acts."

"Brainwashing?"

"Absolutely not."

"It sounds like it."

MacLennan gave him a narrow smile. "What you refer to as brainwashing is simply conditioned response. An example: strap your subject in a chair and show him a picture of an object, say a particular brand of whisky. Each time the whisky appears you give him an electric shock. Repeated enough times the subject will become averse to that brand. I have grossly over simplified, of course. But that is the principle, installing a visually triggered compulsion. What you are doing in such cases is ingraining a new response to replace the one already in place. But it can only produce results on the most simplistic level. You cannot turn criminals into law-abiding citizens by aversion therapy, because criminality is their nature, derived subconsciously, not a single yes/no choice. And what we are dealing with in Stocken's inmates is a behaviour pattern often formed in childhood. It has to be erased and then replaced."

"How?"

"Have you heard of educational laser paradigms?"

"No," Greg said drily.

"It's an idea which goes back several decades. It was the subject of my doctoral thesis. I started off in high-density data-handling techniques, but got sidetracked. Educational paradigms were so much more interesting. They are the biological equivalent of computer programs. You can literally load subject matter into the human brain as though you were squirting bytes into a memory core. Once perfected, there will be no need for schools or universities. You will be given all the knowledge you require in a single burst of light, sending the information through the optic nerve to imprint directly on the brain." MacLennan shrugged affably. "That's the theory, anyway. We are still a long way off achieving those kind of results."

"It sounds impressive," Greg said. "And you can use it to install new behaviour patterns as well?"

"Behaviour is rooted in memory, Mr Mandel. Conditioning again. You fall into a pool when you are a young child, nearly drowning; and in adult life you are wary of water, a poor swimmer, nor do you have any enthusiasm to improve. It is these countless cumulative small events and incidents in your formative years which decide the composition of your psyche. You are a soldier, I believe, Mr Mandel?"

"Was a soldier. I'm retired now."

"You volunteered for the army?"

"Yeah."

"And were you any good as a soldier?"

Greg shifted his weight on the settee's amorphous cushioning, conscious of Stephanie's stare. "I was mentioned in dispatches once or twice."

"And yet thousands, hundreds of thousands, of men your age were totally unsuitable for the military life you excelled in. Physically no different, but mentally, in outlook, your exact opposite. The respective attitudes both determined in the period between your fourth and sixteenth birthdays. We are what we are because of that time, the child being the father of the man. And that is the time we must alter in order to eradicate real-time psychoses. My aim is to substitute false paradigmatic memories for real recollections, thus effecting a radical change of temperament."

"Have you had any success?"

"Limited, but most promising given we have only been here two years. We have already succeeded in assembling some highly realistic synthetic memories. There is one, a walk through a forest." He closed his eyes and the eagerness and tension which had built up as he spoke drained out of his face, leaving him strangely peaceful. Almost the same expression as a synthohead, Greg thought.

"I can see the trees," MacLennan said, his voice reduced to a placid lilt. "They are large, tall as well as broad, in full leaf, oaks and elms. This is pre-Warming, midsummer, with sunbeams breaking through the overhead branches. I can see a squirrel, a red one; he's racing up an oak, round and round the trunk. I'm standing below watching him, touching the bark. It's rough, crinkled, dusted with a powdery green algae. The grass is ankle-high, dewy, wetting my shoes. There are foxgloves everywhere, and weasel-snout; I can smell honeysuckle."

"Lasers can imprint a smell?" Greg asked sceptically.

"The memory of a smell," Stephanie said pedantically. "We adapted the paradigm from a high-definition virtual reality simulation, then added tactile and olfactory senses, as well as emotional responses."

"Emotional responses?"

"Yes. Interpretation is a strong part of memory. if you see a particularly beautiful flower in the forest, you feel good about it; tread in a dog turd on the path, and you're disgusted."

Greg thought about it. He couldn't fault the logic, it was just that the whole concept seemed somewhat fanciful. But someone on the Berkeley board obviously had enough faith to invest in it. Quite heavily, judging by the facilities the Centre offered.

"Have you received this memory as well?" he asked her.

"Yes. It's very realistic. It feels like I was actually in that forest. James forgot to mention the birdsong. The thrushes are warbling the whole time."

Greg turned back to MacLennan, who was watching him levelly.

"How does this help to cure axe murderers?" Greg asked.

"Imagine when you were young if you took that same walk through a tranquil forest for half an hour instead of having to endure your drunken father beating you. If you had that walk, or played football, every evening he came home drunk; if you could remember your mother giving him a kiss instead of crying and screaming for mercy, I think you'd find your outlook on life would be very different."

"Yeah, and is it going to be possible?"

"I believe so. Once we have solved the problem of how to erase, or at the very least weaken, old memories. This is the area of research which requires the most effort in order for the project to succeed. Neurology and psychology to date have concentrated on memory recovery, helping amnesic victims, developing hypnotic recall techniques for vital witnesses, even preserving memories in the face of encroaching senility. The only comparable work in the opposing direction is with drugs which induce a form of transient amnesia, like scopolamine. These are no use to us, as they only prevent memories from being retained while the drug is in effect. What we need is something which will go into a subject's mind and hunt down the original poisonous memories."

"Sounds like a job for a psychic," Greg said.

"It's an option we've considered. In fact it was one reason I was particularly delighted when I was informed you would be coming today. I wanted to quiz you on the parameters of psi. The Home Office said you were one of the best ESP-orientated psychics to emerge from the Mindstar project. Are you able to interpret individual memories?"

"No. Sorry, I'm strictly an empath."

"I see." He clasped his hands together and rested his chin on the knuckles. "Do you know of any psychic who can do that?"

"There were a couple in Mindstar who had the kind of ability you're talking about. They used to be able to lift faces and locations out of a suspect's thoughts." He almost said prisoner, but with Stephanie leaning forward in her seat, hanging on to every word, that would never do. He wanted her wholehearted co-operation. "I don't think they could perform anything like the deep-ranging exploration you require."

"That's a pity," MacLennan said. "I might apply for a licence to practise with a themed neurohormone if one could be developed along those lines."

"Are you completely stonewalled without psychic analysis?"

"No. There are several avenues we can pursue. Paradigms could be structured to wipe selected memories. A sort of anti-memory, if you like. The major trouble is again one of identification. We need to know a memory in order to wipe it—the nature of it, the section of the brain where it is stored."

"A real-time brain scan might just tell us," Stephanie said. "If the subject recounts a particularly traumatic incident it may be possible to locate the specific neurons which house it. The erasure paradigm could then be targeted directly at them. Magic photons, we call it, after the magic bullet; like cancer treatments which kill tumour cells without harming the ordinary cells around it."

"You would need some very sophisticated sensors to scan a brain that accurately," Greg pointed out. "Not to mention processing capacity. Part of my psi-assessment tests involved a SQUID scan, but there was no way you could get the focus fine enough to resolve individual neuron cells."

"Berkeley has allocated us considerable resources," MacLennan said. His chirpy everything-under-control smile had returned. "We have one SQUID brain scanner already installed here at the Centre. Although, admittedly, its resolution does fall some way short of the requirement Stephanie envisages for the magic photons concept to function. But it is a modest first step. And several medical equipment companies are working on models which offer a higher resolution. I have high hopes for the project."

"This paradigm research is an expensive venture," Greg said. "The Board must have a lot of faith in you."

"They do. I didn't promise them instant results and success. They fully understand that it is a medium-term project, commercial viability will not be realized for at least another seven to ten years. But they agreed to back it because of the potential. You see, if paradigm-based treatment does work, it will revolutionize the entire penal system. We would have to rebuild our institutions from the ground up. The only people who will actually require detention are petty criminals, everyone else will be reformed in medical facilities."

"Yeah, I see." He showed Stephanie a sardonic grin. "I still say you'll have trouble convincing people to let them out again."

She shrugged.

"Have you actually tried implanting any of these alternative memories in an inmate?" he asked.

"Indeed we have," MacLennan said. "Nothing dramatic. It's early days yet. We are in the process of acquiring baseline data on how well the paradigms are absorbed." He might have been talking about lab rats for all the emotion in his tone. "The older the subject, the more difficult it becomes, naturally."

"What about Liam Bursken? Has he been given any synthetic memories?"

"No. He was unwilling to co-operate. At the moment it remains a purely voluntary programme, although we do reward participants with extra privileges."

"So essentially he is the same person now as he was when he arrived."

"Yes."

"Great." Greg stood up. "I'd like to see him. He should be able to offer me a few insights."

"As you wish," MacLennan said. "Stephanie will take you down."

"Do you have records of the correspondence he's received?" Greg asked.

MacLennan glanced enquiringly at Stephanie.

"Yes," she said. "It's not much, mostly death threats."

"I'd like copies, please."

"I'll assemble a data package," MacLennan said. "It'll be ready for you when you leave."

"Thanks." There was always the possibility someone had admired Bursken enough to copy the murder technique. Pretty tenuous, though.

"How has Bursken reacted to the Kitchener murder?" Greg asked Stephanie when they had left MacLennan's office.

"He's shown a lot of interest," she said. "He believes it is a vindication of his own crimes."

"Oh?"

"According to Bursken, he is one of God's chosen agents of vengeance in a sinful world. Therefore someone murdering in the same way is proof that God is now instructing them. Therefore, God was instructing him in the first place. QED."

"What's he like? I mean, what sort of formative years did he have that could push him into that?"

She hesitated as they walked into the stairwell, her companionability glitched momentarily. Greg was actually allowed to see worry and even confusion.

"The honest truth, Greg, is I haven't got a clue. We did some research into his background, for all the good it did us. He had a perfectly ordinary childhood. There was some bullying at school, nothing excessive. We could find no evidence of any sexual or mental abuse, no deprivation. Yet even by the standards of this Centre's inmates, he is completely insane. There is no rational explanation for why he went haywire. We have studied him, naturally; his brain function shows no abnormality, there are no chemical imbalances.

"Currently we're trying to determine the actual trigger mechanism of his psychosis, whether there is a single cause to send him off on his killing sprees. MacLennan thought that if we could just gain one insight into how Bursken functions we might eventually be able to understand his mentality. That's why he's prepared to devote time and money on such a hopeless case. By studying the real deviants, we gain more knowledge of the ordinary. But the results have been very patchy, and completely inconclusive. I doubt we ever will understand. I simply thank God that Bursken is a rogue, very rare."

"You mean, even your laser paradigm couldn't cure him?"

"I shouldn't think so. You see, as far as we can tell, there is no evil memory sequence to replace, no trauma to eradicate. Maybe he did hear voices, who knows?"

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?"

"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.