A Quantum Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The light was already beginning to fade as Eleanor drove out of Oakham along the B668, up the hill towards Burley. An advance guard of dark copper-gold clouds probing out of the north had reached the zenith of the opal sky. She wasn't in much of a mood to appreciate sunsets.

The Rutland Times hadn't been able to help. Hotrods had crashed their memory core. They had suffered an even worse data loss than the Stamford and Rutland Meteor; all of their past issues had been transferred to the core from earlier microfiche records.

She hadn't known the hotrods were so active when the PSP fell. Royan had let slip a few hints that he had been part of the pack which had crashed the Ministry of Public Order mainframe. But as a general rule the PSP had suffered remarkably little electronic sabotage during its decade in power. Maybe the hotrods had been saving themselves for the final assault. Although she found that hard to credit. They were too independent, preserving their anonymity through the faceless circuit. You could call them through the link they had infiltrated into English Telecom's datanet, but you never knew who you'd got.

The Ministry of Public Order mainframe was an obvious target for them, one final shove to a government which was already toppling. It had happened within an hour of the bomb blast that annihilated Downing Street. People had talked about a link between the hotrod circuit and the urban predators, she thought that was pure tabloid, a subconscious public desire to juggle facts into a unified conspiracy theory. The mainframe burn wouldn't have required much forward planning, the viruses already existed, but newspapers were a different proposition. To be burnt on ideological grounds their output would have to be monitored continually, victims selected. That required organization, commitment. A cabal within a cabal. There had certainly never been any word of that. Perhaps Royan could tell her.

Forewarned by her failure at the Rutland Times office, she had returned to the parked Jaguar and simply phoned the Melton Times.

"I'm very sorry, madam," the secretary had told her. "But our records of that period were erased by hackers."

"There is no such thing as coincidence," Gabriel had said quietly, as Eleanor swore at the cybofax.

"What do you mean?"

But Gabriel simply shrugged cryptically.

Then Greg had called, and asked her to drive up to Colin Mellor in Cottesmore, saying, "I'll meet you up there."

The Jaguar's wheels scattered a volley of loose chippings into the lush verges as they reached the top of the vale, rattling the big scarlet geraniums which had infiltrated the old hedgerows. Four hundred metres to her right she could see the ruins of Burley House casting a stark jagged outline against the rising velvet penumbra. A few fires were burning in the camp of New Age travellers parked in the embrace of its long curving colonnade wings, pink and blue glow of charcoal cooking grills spilling distorted pools of tangerine light. The travellers had been there for as long as Eleanor could remember, ever since the public petrol supply ran out, the wheels of their antique buses and vans rooting in the earth, tyres perished. Not that the ancient combustion engines would work now anyway.

They had raided the stately home for stones, constructing crude lean-tos against some of the rusting vehicles. A hundred metres from the road, they had tried to build a replica of Stonehenge. Still were trying, by all accounts, it changed minutely every time she went past. Not getting any bigger, but the configuration altered, as if they were still searching for the ideal pattern of astrological harmony.

Keeps them off the streets, she thought wryly. God alone knows where they were supposed to fit in to the promised land of New Conservative regeneration policies. After fifteen years of doing nothing but picking and eating magic mushrooms their brains must look like lumps of gangrenous sponge.

There was an estate of late twentieth-century brick houses on the edge of Cottesmore, ornamental gardens given over to intensely cultivated vegetable plots.

As they moved into the heart of the picturesque village she leant forwards, peering over the steering-wheel. She'd never been to Colin Mellor's house before.

"Further on," Gabriel said.

"Right." She hadn't actually expected Gabriel to come with her to the Rutland Times office. Conversation was always so difficult with Gabriel, and this time, with Joey Foulkes tagging along loyally, it was virtually impossible.

The main street had a blanket preservation order slapped on it. All the buildings had stone walls, roofs were either grey slate or Collyweston stone. Half of them used to be thatch, which had to be stripped off when the Warming started and the fire hazard became too great. Three staked goats were grazing on a wide grass verge in front of a row of cottages.

Several men were sitting with their pint pots at bench tables outside the Sun, thin rings of foam marking their progress.

"Here we go." Gabriel pointed to a wooden bar gate in a long ivy-clad wall opposite the pub.

Eleanor indicated and turned off. Greg was standing on the other side of the gate. He grinned and tugged at the bolt.

The house was a big converted barn, L-shaped, with a steep grey slate roof. Dull silver windows reflected the sun falling behind the pub. She drew up next to the EMC Ranger on the fine gravel park outside the front doors. There was a long meadow at the rear; she saw three or four horses at the far end, dark coats merging into the twilight.

A police sergeant she didn't recognize was climbing out of the EMC Ranger, screwing his cap ceremoniously into place.

"We only just got here," said Greg. He introduced the sergeant as Keith Willet.

The house's iron-bound front door opened. Colin Mellor stood inside, leaning on a wooden walking stick; a seventy-two-year-old with bushy white hair, wearing baggy green corduroy trousers and a mauve cardigan. A huge Alsatian nosed round his legs, staring at the visitors. Eleanor shuddered slightly at the sight of the animal. It was a gene-tailored guard hound; grey-furred, muscles sculpted for speed, supposedly owner-obedient. That was a trait which the geneticists didn't always succeed in splicing together correctly. Greg had told her that when the original military combat hounds were taken into the field some of them had turned on their handlers.

And she'd seen first-hand what the modified beasts could do to people. It had been a gene-tailored sentinel panther which attacked Suzi.

"It's friends, look, Sparky," Colin said, patting the dog's head. "They're all friends." The dog gazed round at them with big cat-iris eyes, and blinked lazily. It looked back up at Colin. Reluctantly, Eleanor thought. She could see Joey Foulkes all tensed up, hand hovering near the give-away bulge under his suit jacket.

"Well, come in," said Colin. The stick was shaken vigorously for emphasis. "Sparky's smelt you all now. He likes you." He backed into the hall, shooing the dog out of the way.

Eleanor found Greg's hand and held him tightly as they went inside.

Colin led them into his lounge. It was on the ground floor, furnished in plain teak, the upholstery a light green; big french windows gave him a view out across the meadow. Biolum globes in smoked-glass pendant shades cast a strong light. There were pictures of battle scenes on every wall; the army from the Napoleonic wars right up to Turkey.

"Before anything else," Eleanor said to Greg, "I've got some bad news for you. The Stamford and Rutland Mercury, the Rutland Times, and the Melton Times all had their memory cores crashed by the hotrods. The circuit said they were too sympathetic to the PSP. So there's no record of any incident at Launde Abbey."

Greg clamped a hand on each forearm, and kissed her warmly. "The hotrods crashed the coroner's office as well," he said. The pleased tone confused her momentarily.

Colin eased himself delicately into a manor wing chair.

Eleanor hadn't seen him since the wedding last year, and even then she'd only had a few words. She thought he looked a lot frailer.

"Now then, Greg," Colin said. "What's all this about?"

Eleanor listened to Greg summarizing the case. Somehow she couldn't draw much comfort from the enigma surrounding Clarissa Wynne's death. Greg's intuition had been right. As usual. But the entire sequence of events was becoming equivocal, shaded in a formless grey murk seeping out of the hinterlands, eroding facts before her eyes. It was sadly depressing.

Greg was in his element, of course. And Gabriel, although to a lesser degree.

Right at the centre of her mind was a tired little girl who wanted to say: 'I saw Nicholas do it. That's an end. Let's leave it. Why do adults always have to be so bloody noble and resolute?

"Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to erase every trace of Clarissa Wynne," Greg said. "Not to mention expense. Hotrods don't come cheap, and they've burnt three newspapers plus a coroner's office; maybe Oakham police station was part of it, maybe not. But the fact remains, every last hard byte on the girl has gone. All we're left with is personal memories. And precious few of them."

"What about the international news libraries?" Colin asked.

"I checked with Julia," Greg said. "They all have files on Kitchener, of course. None of them mention Clarissa Wynne. It was a local matter, and as far as anyone knew an accidental death. Not important enough. Although Globecast's Pan-Europe news and current affairs office think there might have been some kind of hotrod burn against their memory cores. Several file codes relating to that period were scrambled. But they can't actually find anything missing, so there's no way of proving it."

"I doubt they could help anyway," Eleanor said. "If there had been any suspicion that Kitchener was implicated in that girl's death, it would have been headline news the world over. I'd say the PSP's cover-up worked pretty well."

"Yeah," Greg admitted.

"Which is where I come in," Colin said. There was a cheerful smile on his pale face.

Eleanor had the notion he was terribly grateful to be asked. Eager to show he could still pull his weight, not let the side down. Except it was so painfully obvious his health was decaying rapidly. His heart, she guessed.

"If you could," Greg said. He flashed her a shamefaced look. "There's no better tracker."

"Certainly can," Colin said proudly. "The map room's down the corridor." He pressed both hands against the chair, struggling to rise. Joey Foulkes came forward to help him, but he shook off the young hardliner with exaggerated self-reliance.

The map room was a plain white cube, three metres to a side, windowless. It put Eleanor in mind of Kitchener's computer room. Sparky wasn't allowed in.

The biolum panels came on to show a circular flatscreen mounted on one wall. There was a single 'ware module on the floor in a corner.

Colin gave a voice command to the 'ware, and a map of England appeared on the flatscreen. He stood in front of it, both hands pressed on the bulb of his stick, and looked the outline up and down, nodding in satisfaction. "It's there, Greg, I can still do it, by God!" His voice was a weak growl.

"That's why I came," Greg said. "Nobody else in your class."

She could detect a tremor in his voice. When she looked his eyes were dark with pain. She fumbled for his hand.

"Talk to me, young Keith," Colin said.

Willet twitched uncomfortably. "What about, sir?"

"This dreadful Maurice Knebel chap, of course. I need your mind's image of him to work on."

"Sir?"

"Tell us about an incident you remember," Greg said. "A station cricket match where he got caught out. What did he wear? Bad habits, good habits. What sort of food did he eat? Who were his friends?"

"Yes, sir. Well, there was one suit which he always wore, this would be around the time of the Wynne girl's death I suppose. Brown and grey, check, it was. Used to get some stick about it."

Eleanor filtered out what the sergeant was saying. It was almost unfair to make someone so stolid and reliable relate trivial tales from the past.

Colin had become preternaturally still. His stare had developed that distance of all gland users, seeing at ninety degrees to the real universe.

The old man had been a major in an English army infantry regiment at the time when the Mindstar Brigade was being formed. He was fifty-five and due for imminent retirement when the blanket service psi-assessment tests gave him the excuse he needed to extend his beloved commission. Mindstar hadn't intended to take anyone his age, but his farsight rating was one of the highest they recorded. Fortunately his ESP faculty had almost developed as it was intended.

Willet was droning on about Maurice Knebel and his fondness for Indian food when Colin leant forwards and deftly pressed his open palm against the flatscreen. The map image shifted instantly, expanding the area around his hand. It was centred on Peterborough, she noticed with a start. The vivid featureless turquoise of the Fens Basin had bitten into a third of the screen.

Willet had stopped talking.

"Keep going," Colin instructed.

"Sir. Curries were his favourite…"

Eleanor could see a lone yellow dot in the basin, just east of Peterborough. Prior's Fen, she realized. Colin must keep the map scrupulously updated. He had spent most of the PSP years in France, charging kombinates a small fortune for his services. "Too old to join the fight against Armstrong," he had told her bitterly.

He touched the map again. This time Peterborough jumped up to occupy half of the flatscreen, leaving a ten kilometre band of countryside visible around the outside.

Willet flashed Greg a despairing glance. Greg gave him a fast gesture: carry on.

"The woman he was living with left him when he was appointed station political officer. There was talk of him and one of the appararchik women on the town's PSP committee…"

"Here," Colin said. His forefinger touched the map in a positive jab. A district turned a shade lighter, its scarlet boundary line flashing insistently. He stood right up against the screen, face coated in a backwash of artificial blue and yellow radiance, deepening the folds of flesh. "That's where he is. I can't get any more precise than that. Not from this distance."

Eleanor could feel a groan of dismay building in her gullet. She was afraid to let it out in case it sounded too much like a whimper.

"Figures," Greg said. "He's PSP, where else would he be perfectly safe right now?"

Colin's forefinger was pointing at Walton.