A Quantum Murder

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There was a crescent of dun-coloured fur partially obscured by the tall spires of grass on the edge of the orange grove. The picture dominated Greg's optical nerves, fed to him by his Heckler and Koch hunting rifle's targeting imager. A fan of nearly invisible pink laser light swept across his vision from left to right, producing minute sparkles when it touched the dewdrops clinging to the grass. A grid of red neon materialized in its wake. The discrimination program cut in, analysing the shape behind the tussock from the tenuous laser return, and the grid began to fold, shrink-wrapping around the rabbit. Cartoon-blue target circles materialized, and Greg shifted the rifle slightly, his finger on the trigger.

The infra-red laser pulse drilled the rabbit straight through its cranium. A tiny wisp of blue smoke curled up from the five-millimetre circle of singed fur. It rolled over without any fuss.

I hope it fucking hurt, you fur-clad locust bastard.

Eleanor hadn't slept much for the last few nights. Snuggled up in his arms, quiet face shaded by sporadic glints of moonlight. She wouldn't voice her fear, so he kept his peace, and let her hold him for the reassurance she needed.

Even he, hardened by Turkey and the inevitable propensity towards murderous fury by some squaddies, had found Nicholas Beswick's profanity difficult to exorcise.

A rabbit was squatting on its haunches at the base of an orange sapling, wet nose sniffing the air, whiskers vibrating eagerly. Thanks to the target imager's enhancement its melancholic liquid eye was thirty centimetres across. The laser speared the shiny little vermin straight through its pupil.

How his espersense could miss such an abominable maelstrom of insanity in the boy's unruly thoughts was impossible to comprehend. He knew minds, from the sad and pathetic to the most dangerous brooding psychotic. He could tell, instantly. Engaging Liam Bursken's mind had been a horrendous feat—there had not, could never be, any common ground with such a demented personality. But Nicholas Beswick, he was so appealing, with his timidity and rashness, a humorous reminder of Greg's own adolescent shortcomings, an amplification of all the angst and fervour so wonderfully endemic to that age group.

I liked him.

To be so wrong, so blind, was to invite a fundamental disbelief in his entire empathic ability. But there had been nothing, no hint.

Two rabbits were frolicking together, a big old buck and a frisky doe. He took the buck first, then cooked the doe's brain as she quivered in confused distress.

Fifteen down, a thousand lucky charms to go.

Ranasfari had been badly upset. Shocked that a fellow Launde acolyte could do such a thing to his old mentor. Hiding his grief behind a flimsy gruffness, saying he was perturbed that there had been no alternates in the past. It didn't fit the theories. Gabriel had taken him home, for once subdued and sympathetic herself.

The alternative universe notion was something Greg had clung to for a brief hopeful moment. Suppose Eleanor, untutored, on her first neurohormone infusion, had wandered sideways into one of those timelines where Hitler's grandchildren governed the world from a gleaming Berlin metropolis, where their Nicholas Beswick was certifiably deranged. That would give him the out he needed, that would mean he could carry on liking the boy.

But, as always, there was the knife. Here, in real time, real history. And so many peripheral details, the timing of the shower, Isabel, a possible complicity with the Randon company, the implausibility of a tekmerc penetration mission.

Only his ineptitude had failed to spot the psychopath. And intuition. It couldn't be him, not that boy.

He slammed the rifle over to rapid fire, and sent a barrage of laser pulses streaking into the long grass. Rabbits toppled over, small flashes of orange flame mushroomed from the dead undergrowth. The entire warren began to flee, bounding through the grass. Half the ground seemed to be on the move.

Fucking vegan rodents.

"Greg."

It was Eleanor's voice.

He plucked the target imager's monocle from his face, a ring of skin around his eye tingling as it peeled free. He had been leaning against the wooden bar fence around the grove for some support. Now he saw it had left smears of damp algae across the front of his jeans and black sweatshirt. He made a half-hearted attempt to brush it off, holding the rifle in one hand.

There were three people with Eleanor, walking towards him from the farmyard. A middle-aged couple and a young girl. The woman had a heavily drawn face, sun ripened and lined; her curly brown hair flecked with lighter strands, not yet grey, but on the verge. Her ankle-length dress was a dun brown, a decade-old Sunday best, smart but fading slightly, the hem and neck fraying. Her husband—they were so obviously married—was as tall as Greg, but leaner, arms and legs sinuous, large labourer's hands mottled with blue veins. He was in a suit, trousers with a multitude of iron creases down the front, never quite managing to fold down the same line, his grey shirt open at the neck, showing a V of tanned skin. The colour of his thinning sandy red hair was unpleasantly familiar. Greg felt his churlish anger at the rabbits grounding out, opening up a dark void inside.

Eleanor gave him a soulful look, her hands gripped in front of her, fingers knotting in agitation. "Greg, this is Derek and Maria Beswick." She gave the girl a hesitant smile. "And it's Emma, isn't it?"

The girl nodded shyly, her eyes wide, staring at Greg's hunting rifle in trepidation. She was about thirteen, holding her mother's hand. Not a pretty girl, nor destined ever to be one, Greg thought, her cheeks were too plump, a bulge of cellulite already building up under her weak chin. Her blouse and skirt looked handmade, a green and blue print, with a generous cut.

Back when Mindstar was starting up, the specialists and generals had talked of educing a teleport faculty in some recruits. Flipping around the world, from country to country, over oceans, in zero time; just think of a location and zip you were there. Like all the rest of Mindstar's brochure promises it had come to nothing. Which was a great pity, because right now Greg wanted to be anywhere else on the planet—a dungeon in Teheran, an African republic police cell.

"We've come about our boy, Mr Mandel," Derek said. There was a lot of strain in his voice. Derek Beswick was a proud man, not used to entreating strangers.

"I'm sorry," Greg said miserably. "It's all out of our hands now." Shit, and he'd called Nicholas a wimp.

"He didn't do it, Mr Mandel," Maria said. "Not my son. Not those terrible things the channels are saying. I don't care how upset he was over a girl. Nicholas would not do something so awful."

Greg wanted to shout: I saw him, I watched him do it! But he couldn't do it, not to a woman like Maria Beswick.

"I don't understand the things Nicholas talks about, Mr Mandel," Derek said. "The physics and the cosmic phenomena things in deep space. He tries to tell us when he comes home, but it goes over our heads. We're sheep farmers, that's all. But I was so proud of that boy, my boy, when he got to university, a scholarship… He was going to better himself. He wouldn't have to get up at five every morning, like us. He could make something of his life. And when he left home it was about the worst year anyone could go to university, with all the troubles and everything. But he struggled through. Then he got asked to go to Launde. Blimey, even I'd heard of Dr Kitchener. Nicholas worshipped that old man. He didn't kill him."

"There is a lot of evidence."

"Nicholas told us you were a detective," Maria said. "That you were the best detective in England. He said that at the start you didn't think he did it. Is that right?"

"It…" It's not that simple! "Yeah."

The Beswicks exchanged a pathetically hopeful glance.

"Please, Mr Mandel," Derek said. "We can see you've got the farm to tend and everything, and we're not nearly as important as Julia Evans, but could you just keep investigating the case for us? Just one more day would help, something might turn up, something that might exonerate him. Jail would kill Nicholas as sure as a death penalty. He's a gentle boy."

Your gentle son stuck a knife into the belly of a sixty-seven-year-old man and ripped him in two.

"We'll look into it for you," Eleanor said. Greg gaped at her.

"Do you mean that?" Emma asked, she was looking up at Eleanor, chubby face filled with apprehension. "Really mean it?"

"Yes, I mean it. There are one or two ambiguities which need clarifying in any case."

Derek and Maria consulted each other silently.

"Anything," Derek said. "Anything you can turn up would help. That lawyer woman, Collier, she seems to think Nicholas is guilty."

"It's been a good year for us so far," Maria said. "Really, very good. There are a lot of our ewes pregnant, the lambs should fetch a good price in the spring. So, could we possibly pay you in instalments, please?"

Greg just wanted to curl up and die. "There's no fee," he managed to say.

Maria's face stiffened. "We're not asking for charity, Mr Mandel."

"It isn't charity," Eleanor said quickly. "We can't accept a fee, not legally. You see, we're still on the Home Office payroll for the Kitchener case, and we remain on it until the trial is complete. How we run the investigation is entirely at our discretion, that's in the contract we signed."

Maria looked as though she was about to protest, but Derek took her hand, squeezing a warning.

"Where are you staying?" Eleanor asked.

"I have to get home," Derek said. "With the sheep, and all. But Maria's got a room in a bed and breakfast house in Northgate Street, not far from the police station."

"OK, we'll be in touch."

"What did you go and tell them that for? I can't believe you said that!"

"Calm down," Eleanor said.

"Calm down? That boy is a psychopathic killer, and you tell his parents we're going to get him off?"

"You don't think that."

"Don't think what?"

"That he did it," she said patiently.

"I saw him flicking do it! And so did you!"

"That's not what I said, Gregory. I said you don't think he did it."

"I…" He covered his face with his hands, massaging his temple. She was right. Eleanor was always bloody right, especially when it came to what went on in his mind. Bloody unfair, that was.

He gave her a reproachful smile. "How do you do that?"

"I had a good teacher."

"What ambiguities were you talking about?"

"The fact that your espersense didn't catch the guilt."

"Psi isn't perfect," he said automatically.

Eleanor just looked at him.

"Yeah, all right. I couldn't miss something that obvious. But we saw him do it, though."

"We, or rather I, had a vision that he did it. That's all."

"A vision that was backed up by finding the knife, complete with fingerprints."

"If Nicholas was framed, then of course physical evidence would be planted to corroborate the vision."

"So how did you come to have the vision if it wasn't what actually happened?"

"I don't know. Another type of psychic who can make the images seem real? A fantasyscape artist? You tell me. You're the expert."

"I never heard of any psi ability remotely like that back in Mindstar, not even rumours. The nearest would be eidolonics, but no eidopath could work up an image like that."

"You hadn't heard of a retrospection neurohormone until last Wednesday."

"No, Eleanor. I just don't believe it. It's too complicated. The killer tried to obliterate all trace of the retrospection neurohormone, remember? He never intended for anyone to use it. So there was no way he would have some psychic on permanent standby in case we infused it to see what happened that night. Besides, I would have sensed another psychic operating at Launde, and don't forget Nicholas saw you. That's the real clincher. He actually confirms you went back there to witness the murder. And every event we observed that night matches the statements which the students gave."

"Everything except the murder."

"If everything else was kosher, why should the murder be any different?"

"So you do think Nicholas killed Kitchener?"

Greg thought about it, all the doubts and internal tension that had been twisting him up for the last few days. His intuition was the root, strong enough to keep goading against all logic; like a rash developing in his synapses, an itch you just couldn't scratch. Superstition, people called it. So what it boiled down to was did he believe in his ability? In himself? "Oh, shit." He took a breath. "No, I don't think Nicholas did it. I know he didn't. But how the actual murderer pulled that stunt with him and the knife…"

"Come on, Gregory, never mind the details; start thinking. Assume you are right and Nicholas is innocent, what do we do next?"

"Prove he was framed. Find the real killer."

"See? Simple."

"Thank you. Do you have any equally impressive suggestions how we go about it?"

She gave him a pensive look, tapping a forefinger on her teeth. "The first thing to do is find out if someone else had a motive to kill Kitchener. Once we know who, we can start to work out how they pulled it off. What does your intuition say?"

"Good question."

He ordered a small neurohormone secretion, and reached inwards, down into that pool of silent solitude at the core of his own mind, rooting round for convictions. The only time his intuition had tweaked him during the case was when he saw the three little fish lakes at Launde. Which he had then gone on to conveniently forget about once Eleanor had infused the retrospection neurohormone. The lakes, they were the reason he doubted Nicholas's guilt.

But why?

Greg switched the flatscreen in the lounge to phone function as he relaxed back into the settee. He flicked through the notes stored in his cybofax until he found the number for Stocken Hall, and squirted it at the flatscreen's 'ware. A secretary answered and tried to fob him off when he asked for James MacLennan, so he did his conjuring trick with his cover-all Home Office authority again.

"You're getting to be a real bully with that," Eleanor observed. She was sitting in a chair opposite the settee, out of the flatscreen camera's pick-up field.

"Yeah; feels pretty good, too." He spread his arms out along the back of the settee with a gratuitous sigh.

She gave him a derisory sneer in return.

Stocken Hall's director appeared on the flatscreen, sitting behind his desk, wearing a smart blue suit. The picture window's blinds were closed, as before.

"Mr Mandel, I believe congratulations are in order." A warm regular smile displayed perfect teeth.

"The police have a suspect in custody, yeah."

"Excellent news. Perhaps the media will now leave us all alone."

"Don't bet your life on it."

"No. Quite. How may I help you? My secretary said you were calling on urgent Home Office business."

"Tell you, I need some information on the way the human brain works, specifically in your field: memories. That suspect, Nicholas Beswick, he actually managed to fool me. Now he's the very first person ever to have done that. As you can imagine, that makes me a little nervous."

"Indeed. By fooling you, do you mean your empathic sense?"

"Yeah. He said he didn't do it and I believed him. You see, there was no evasion, no duplicity. Any mention of that murder should have triggered his memory of the event, and with it all the usual associated feelings of guilt and remorse. But I didn't sense a single suggestion of iniquity or deception. His mind appeared utterly normal, nothing at all like that cracked monster Liam Bursken."

"I see. It does seem somewhat strange."

"What I wanted to know was: is it possible he could deliberately make himself forget? I mean, even subconsciously; just wipe the murder from his brain? Beswick is still claiming he hasn't done it, even though the evidence is pretty conclusive. I remembered you mentioned some kind of drug which would cause forgetfulness."

MacLennan's smile downgraded to serious concern. "Scopolamine. Yes. It's a common enough substance, extracted from plants. Normally it's employed as a mild sedative, and for travel sickness. And it has been used for ritual purposes for several centuries. But large doses can be used to induce what amounts to a trance state. There have been many cases of scopolamine intoxication identified, especially in Latin America. It was quite a problem with criminal gangs around the turn of the century. If you mix it with a tranquilizer it can be used to render someone completely docile. And it can be administered with a simple spray. Under its influence people would hand over their valuables, even empty their bank accounts from cash dispensers, and then have no recollection of ever doing so. It went out of fashion when the cashless society became firmly established, of course. Money transfers can be traced too easily these days."

"Jesus." The idea was unnerving, muggers armed with aerosols instead of knives, and you knew nothing about it until hours later when you returned to reality in a daze. He didn't like that at all—maybe it had happened to him already, how could he tell? — but then drugs always left him cold. "Could Beswick have taken scopolamine to forget the murder?"

"Oh, no. It doesn't work that way. Besides, I'm sure the police would have found traces of it in his blood."

"Yeah." But would they have checked for it? "I'll ask." He loaded a note in his cybofax. "Is there any other method you can think of?"

MacLennan gazed inwardly for a moment. "As I told you, memory is perhaps the least explored facet of the human brain. However, there are two types of natural amnesia which I would offer as applicable in this case."

"Two?"

"Indeed. A condition called transient global amnesia allows its victims to perform their usual jobs and maintain their standard behaviour pattern. But at the end of the day they cannot remember any event which occurred. An example: you could hold a long and intricate conversation with them, to which they would respond entirely within character; yet if you asked them about it the next day they would have no recollection of ever having talked to you."

"Is there any way of telling if someone suffers from it?"

"The person concerned will often realize for themselves, especially if the condition is acute. It's not very common, but a doctor would certainly be able to recognize the symptoms from what the patient was describing."

"Right, thank you." Greg made another series of notes on his cybofax. "What is the second condition?"

"Trauma erasure, which is even rarer; but there have been recorded and verified instances where it has occurred."

"Such as?"

"A certain type of event, often violent or terrifying. Something literally so horrible that the mind simply rejects it. A particularly bloody road accident, for instance. People have witnessed them, and then failed even to remember they were present when questioned afterwards. Police often have to deal with mugging victims who cannot remember what their attacker looked like even though they were in close proximity for several minutes. But it would have to be an extraordinarily potent event to trigger such a radical neural mechanism?

"An event like a grisly murder?"

"Yes, indeed. If Beswick acted in a fit of rage, he may not have been able to accept what he had done once that rage wore off. Under those circumstances trauma erasure may have been enacted. I offer no guarantees, of course, I am merely generalizing."

"I understand. If Beswick is suffering from one of these types of amnesia, would a psychiatrist be able to coax the memory out?"

"I don't know. It depends how deeply it is buried. You say it is beyond even subconscious recall?"

"Yes."

"Hypnosis may give us access. But from what you've said I wouldn't hold out much hope. In any case, it would definitely be a long-term project. There would be a lot of counselling required first, he would have to want to recover the memories."

"I see. Well, thank you for your time."

"Not at all."

"We're not exactly helping our cause, are we?" Eleanor said after MacLennan's mechanical smile vanished from the flatscreen.

"Not a lot, no. But at least we know it is theoretically possible for Beswick to forget he murdered Kitchener. It explains why my interview with him was such a dud."

"It might help rebuild your confidence in your psi ability, but it's also a terrific bonus for the prosecution," she said indignantly.

"Hey, you were the one that told his parents we'd continue the investigation."

"Yes, I know." She folded her arms like a rebuked child, giving the carpet a moody stare.

He squirted another number at the flatscreen. Amanda Paterson answered, and once more the Home Office authorization was deployed like a blunt weapon.

"I know what I'd tell you to do with it," Eleanor murmured airily, her gaze switching to the ceiling.

The flatscreen showed a slightly out of focus view of the Oakham CID office, a couple of detectives working at their desks, the situation screen on the back wall still displaying a map of the town and surrounding countryside. Vernon Langely's face slid across the picture as he sat down facing the camera. "I was interviewing Nicholas Beswick," the detective admonished.

"How's it going?" Greg asked.

"Would you believe the little cretin still says he didn't do it? We've even shown him the report on the knife, confirming the fingerprints on the handle are his. He claims he was framed. Christ, and they all said he was the smartest of the bunch. Makes me wonder what the thick one must be like."

"Yeah, it's a real poser, isn't it?" Greg had felt like this once before, demob happy. When it didn't matter what he said to the brass, they couldn't do a thing about it. This time it was the sheer audacity of going up against ridiculous odds, confounding authority, which was producing an anarchistic glee.

"What did you want?" Vernon asked suspiciously.

"Several things. Firstly, I'm chasing you up over the search program. You haven't squirted over the results yet."

"What search program?"

"For previous incidents at Launde Abbey."

"But the investigation is over."

Eleanor's hands traced an imaginary bulge over her belly, she grinned broadly.

"It ain't over till the fat lady sings," Greg said cheerfully.

"Hell, Greg, we're busy."

"Did you run the search program?"

"I think so. Hang on." Vernon started typing on a terminal keyboard, his face resentful.

Like old times, Greg thought.

"We ran it; there is no record of any previous police call-out to Launde Abbey. Satisfied?"

Greg closed his eyes, considering options. "How far back do those records go?"

"Four years. The station 'ware was infected with a virus when the PSP fell, the memories were wiped. A lot of stations had the same problem, they were all plugged into the Ministry of Public Order mainframe when the circuit hotrods crashed it. The fallout was pretty severe, they did a lot of damage. And of course the People's Constables weren't exactly sticklers for procedure. There was very little in the way of back-up memories. One of the reasons the New Conservatives formed the Inquisitors is because so many records from that time were lost."

"And you were transferred to Oakham after the PSP fell, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"OK, I want you to go around everyone who was stationed at Oakham during the PSP decade, and ask them if they remember anything about Launde Abbey."

"I see," Vernon said in a voice which was excessively polite.

"Good. I shall be coming into town to interview Beswick again this afternoon. You can tell me what you found then." He referred to his cybofax. "There is also Beswick's blood sample."

"What about it?"

"All my file says is that it doesn't contain any syntho. There are no tabulated results."

"So?"

"Did you run any other drug tests?"

Vernon started his laborious typing again. "There were some traces of alcohol, that's all."

"Call the lab, I want to know if they checked for anything else, and if so what they found. And even if they did check, I want a full-spectrum analysis run again on both the urine and blood samples today. Tell them to look for scopolamine."

"Scopolamine?"

"Yeah."

"Anything else?" The irony hung poised like a scalpel.

"I need to look at Beswick's medical records. If you could have them ready for when I come in, please."

"Is this official, Greg?"

"Very."

"In connection with the Kitchener murder?"

"What else?"

"All right, I'll phone the lab." The image blanked out.

"The first thing he's going to do is phone the Home Office," Eleanor said. "Find out if you're still authorized to shove him around like that."

"Yeah," Greg mumbled. He patted the settee, and she came over.

"Second thoughts?" she asked. She sat with her legs up on the armrest cushions, back resting against his shoulder.

"Not just yet." He put his arm around her. "You do realize we are basing all this on my one tenuous belief that there was some incident in Launde's past. If it does turn out nothing happened, then all we've achieved is to bury Nicholas even further."

"You really can't remember what it was?"

"No. I'm even starting to question if I did remember anything. It seems so fragile. Maybe it's me who's suffering from transient global amnesia."

"Not you, my love."

"Thanks." He tapped out a number on the cybofax, and squirted it at the flatscreen.

"Who are you calling now?"

"Julia. I want to make sure my Home Office authorization isn't withdrawn. And then she can request a search through all the national and international commercial news libraries for me, going back say fifteen years just to be on the safe side. See if we can find out what happened at Launde that way."

Eleanor giggled. "A search through fifteen years' worth of every library's news files?"

"No messing. She ain't broke."

"She will be after that."