Kéthani

FIVE THE TOUCH OF THE ANGELS

The sun was going down on another clear, sharp January day when Standish received the call. He’d left the station at the end of his shift and was driving over the snow-covered moors towards home and another cheerless evening with Amanda. As he reached the crossroads, he decided to stop at the Dog and Gun for a couple beforehand, let a few pints take the edge off his perceptions so that Amanda’s barbs might not bite so deep tonight.

His mobile rang. It was Kathy at control. “Doug. Where are you?”

“On my way home. Just passing the Onward Station.” The alien edifice was a five hundred metre tall spire like an inverted icicle on the nearby hillside.

“Something’s just come up.”

Standish groaned. Another farmer reporting stolen heifers, no doubt.

“A ferryman just rang. There’s been a murder in the area. I’ve called in a scene-of-crime team.”

He almost drove off the road. “A murder?”

She gave him the address of a secluded farmhouse a couple of miles away, then rang off.

He turned off the B-road and slowed, easing his Renault down a narrow lane between snow-topped dry-stone walls. The tyres cracked the panes of frozen puddles in a series of crunching reports. On either hand, for as far as the eye could see, the rolling moorland was covered in a pristine mantle of snow.

Murder…

Ten years ago Standish had worked as a detective inspector with the homicide division in Leeds. He had enjoyed the job. He’d been part of a good team and their detection and conviction rate had been high. He viewed his work as necessary in not only bringing law and order to an increasingly crime-ridden city, but also, in some metaphorical way, bringing a measure of order to what he saw as a disordered and chaotic universe. He had no doubt that every time he righted a wrong he was, on some deep subconscious level, putting right his own inability to cope with the hectic modern world he was finding less and less to his taste.

And then the Kéthani came along…

Within months, crime figures had dropped dramatically. Within a year, murders had fallen by almost eighty per cent. Why kill someone when, six months later, they would be resurrected and returned to Earth? In the early days, of course, murderers thought they could outwit the gift of the Kéthani. They killed their victims in hideous ways, ensuring that no trace of the body remained, and attempted to conceal or destroy the implant devices. But the nanotech implants were indestructible, and emitted a signal that alerted the local Onward Station to their whereabouts. Each implant contained a sample of DNA and a record of the victim’s personality. Within a day of discovery, the device would be ferried to the Kéthani home planet, and the individual successfully brought back to life. And then they would return to Earth and assist with investigations…

Two years after the coming of the Kéthani, the Leeds homicide division had been disbanded, and Standish shunted sideways into the routine investigation of car thefts and burglaries.

Like most people he knew, he had rejoiced at the arrival of the aliens and the gift they gave to humanity. He had been implanted within a month and tried to adjust his mind to the fact that he was no longer haunted by the spectre of death.

Shortly before the arrival of the Kéthani, Standish married Amanda Evans, the manageress of an optician’s franchise in Bradley. For a while, everything had been wonderful: love and life everlasting. But the years had passed, and his marriage to Amanda had undergone a subtle and inexplicable process of deterioration and he had gradually become aware that he was, somewhere within himself, deeply dissatisfied with life.

And he had no idea who or what to blame, other than himself.

The farmhouse was no longer the centre of a working farm but, like so many properties in the area, had been converted into an expensive holiday home. It sat on a hill with a spectacular view over the surrounding moorland.

Standish turned a corner in the lane and found his way blocked by the Range Rover belonging to one of the local ferrymen. He braked and climbed out into the teeth of a bitter wind. He turned up the collar of his coat and hurried across to the vehicle.

The ferryman sat in his cab, an indistinct blur seen through the misted side window. When Standish rapped on the glass and opened the door, he saw Richard Lincoln warming his hands on a mug of coffee from a Thermos.

“Doug, that was quick. Didn’t expect you people out here for a while yet.”

“I was passing. What happened?”

He’d got to know Lincoln over the course of a few tea-time sessions at the Dog and Gun a year ago, both men coming off duty at the same time and needing the refreshment and therapy of good beer and conversation.

Lincoln was a big, silver-haired man in his sixties, and unfailingly cheerful. He wore tweeds, which gave him a look of innate conservatism belied by his liberal nature. His bonhomie had pulled Standish from the doldrums on more than one occasion.

Lincoln finished his coffee. “Bloody strange, Doug. I was at the Station, on the vid-link with Sarah Roberts, a colleague. She was at home.” He pointed to the converted farmhouse. “We were going over a few details about a couple of returnees when she said she’d be back in a second—there was someone at the door. She disappeared from sight and came back a little later. She was talking to someone, obviously someone she knew. She was turning to the screen to address me when there was a loud… I don’t quite know how to describe it. A crack. A report.”

“A gunshot?”

Lincoln nodded. “Anyway, she cried out and fell away from the screen. I ran to the control room and sure enough… We were being signalled by her implant. She was dead. Look.”

Lincoln reached out and touched the controls of a screen embedded in the dashboard. An image flickered into life, and Standish made out the shot of a well-furnished front room, with a woman’s body sprawled across the floor, a bloody wound in her upper chest.

Absently, Lincoln fingered the implant at his temple. “I contacted you people and drove straight over.”

“Did you pass any other vehicles on the way here?”

Lincoln shook his head. “No. And I was on the lookout, of course. The strangest thing is… Well, come and see for yourself.”

Lincoln climbed from the cab and Standish joined him. They moved towards the wrought-iron gate that barred their way. It was locked.

“Look,” Lincoln said. He indicated the driveway and lawns of the farmhouse. A thick covering of snow gave the scene the aspect of a traditional Christmas card.

Standish could see no tracks or footprints.

“Follow me.” Lincoln walked along the side of the wall that encircled the property. Standish followed, wading through the foot of snow that covered the springy heather. They climbed a small rise and halted, looking down on the farmhouse from the elevated vantage point.

Lincoln pointed to the rear of the building. “Same again,” he said, looking at Standish.

“There’s not a single damned footprint to be seen,” Standish said.

“Nothing. No footprints, tyre-marks, tracks of any kind. The snow stopped falling around midday, so there’s no way a new fall could have covered any tracks. Anyway, the killer came to the house forty-five minutes ago.”

“But how? If he didn’t leave tracks…” Standish examined the ground, searching for the smallest imprint. He looked at Lincoln. “There is one explanation, of course.”

“There is?”

“The killer was always in the house, concealed somewhere. He came before the snow fell and hid himself. Then he emerged, crept through the house to the door, stepped outside and knocked.”

“But that’d mean…”

Standish nodded. “If I’m right, then he’s still in there.”

“What do you think?” Lincoln asked. “Should we go in?”

In the old days, before the Kéthani, he would not have risked it. Now, with death no longer the threat it used to be, he didn’t think twice.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They returned to the front gate and climbed over. Standish led the way, high-stepping through the deep snow.

He had the sudden feeling of being involved in one of those Golden Age whodunits he’d devoured as a teenager, stories of ingenious murders carried out with devious cunning and improbable devices.

The front door was unlocked. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, Standish carefully turned the handle and pushed open the door. He led the way to the lounge.

Sarah Roberts lay on her back before the flickering vid-screen. The earlier image of her, Standish thought, had done nothing to convey her beauty. She was slim and blonde, her face ethereally beautiful. Like an angel, he thought.

They moved into the big, terracotta-tiled kitchen and checked the room thoroughly. They found the entrance to a small cellar and descended cautiously. The cellar was empty. Next they returned to the kitchen and moved into the adjacent dining room, but again found nothing.

“Upstairs?” Lincoln said.

Standish nodded. He led the way, climbing the wide staircase in silence. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, two bare and unoccupied, the third furnished with a single bed. They went through them from top to bottom. He was aware of the steady pounding of his heart as Standish pulled aside curtains and opened wardrobes. Last of all they checked the converted attic, spartanly furnished like the rest of the bedrooms, and just as free of lurking gunmen.

“Clean as a whistle,” Lincoln said as they made their way downstairs.

“I wish we’d found the killer,” Standish muttered. “I don’t like the alternative.” What was the alternative, he wondered? An eerie, impossible murder in a house surrounded by snow…

They entered the lounge. Lincoln knelt beside the body, reached out, and touched the woman’s implant.

Years ago, before the Kéthani, Standish had seen any number of bodies during the course of a working week, and he had never really become accustomed, or desensitised, to the fact that these once living people had been robbed of existence.

Now, when he did occasionally come across a corpse in the line of duty, he was immediately struck by the same feeling of futile waste and tragedy—only to be brought up short with the realisation that now, thanks to the Kéthani, the dead would be granted new life.

Lincoln looked up at him, his expression stricken. “Christ, Doug. This isn’t right.”

Standish felt his stomach turn. “What?”

Lincoln slumped back against the wall. Standish could see that he was sweating. “Her implant’s dead.”

“But I thought you said… you received the signal at the Station, right?”

Lincoln nodded. “It was the initial signal indicating that the subject had died.”

“So it should still be working?”

“Of course. It should be emitting a constant pulse.” He shook his head. “Look, this has never happened before. It’s unknown. These things just don’t pack up. They’re Kéthani technology.”

“Maybe it was one of those false implants? Don’t people with objections to the Kéthani sometimes have them?”

Lincoln waved. “Sarah worked for the Kéthani, Doug. And anyway, it was working. I saw the signal myself. Now the damned thing’s dead.”

Standish stared down at the woman, a wave of nausea overcoming him. He was struck once more by her attenuated Nordic beauty, and he was sickened by the thought that she would never live again. Amanda would have called him a sexist bastard: as if the tragedy were any the greater for the woman being beautiful.

“Can’t something be done?”

Lincoln lifted his shoulders in a hopeless shrug. “I don’t honestly know. The device needs to be active in the minutes immediately after the subject’s death, in order to begin the resurrection process. Maybe the techs at the Station might be able to do something. Like I said, this has never happened before.”

The room was hot, suffocatingly so. Standish moved to a window at the back of the room and was about to open it when he saw something through the glass.

He stepped from the lounge and into the kitchen. The back door was open a few inches. He crossed to it and, with his handkerchief, eased it open a little further and peered out.

The snow on the path directly outside the door had been melted in a circle perhaps a couple of metres across, revealing a stone-flagged path and a margin of lawn. The snow began again immediately beyond the melt, but there was no sign of footprints or any other tracks.

He returned to the lounge. Lincoln was on his mobile, evidently talking to someone at the Onward Station. “And there’s nothing at your end, either? Okay. Look, get a tech down here, fast.”

Standish crossed the room and stood before the big picture window, staring out at the darkening land with his back to the corpse. He really had no wish to look upon the remains of Sarah Roberts. Her reflection, in the glass, struck him as unbearably poignant, even more angelic as it seemed to float, ghost-like and evanescent, above the floor.

Lincoln joined him. “They’re sending someone down to look at the implant.”

Standish nodded. “The scene-of-crime team should be here any minute.” He glanced at the ferryman. “You didn’t hear her visitor’s voice when she returned from answering the door?”

“Nothing. I was aware that there was someone in the room by Sarah’s attitude. She seemed eager to end the call. But I didn’t see or hear anyone else.”

“Have you any idea which door she answered, front or back?”

Lincoln turned and looked at the vid-screen. “Let’s see, she was facing the screen, and she moved off to the left—so she must have answered the back door.”

That would fit with the door being ajar—but what of the melted patch?

“What kind of person was she? Popular? Boyfriend, husband?”

Lincoln shrugged. “I didn’t really know her. Station gossip was that she was a bit of a cold fish. Remote. Kept herself to herself. Didn’t make friends. She wasn’t married, and as far as I know she didn’t have a partner.”

“What was her job at the Station?”

“Well, she was designated a liaison officer, but to be honest I don’t exactly know what that entailed. I kept her up to date with the dead I delivered and the returnees, but I don’t know what she did with the information. She worked with Masters, the Station Director. He’d know more than me.”

“How long had she been at the Station?”

“Two or three months. But before that she’d worked at others up and down the country, so I heard.”

Standish nodded. “I’m just going to take another look around. I’ll be down when the scene-of-crime people turn up.”

He left the lounge and climbed the stairs again. He stood in the doorway of the only furnished bedroom and took in the bed—a single bed, which struck him as odd—and the bedside table with nothing upon it.

He moved to the bathroom and scanned the contents: a big shower stall, a Jacuzzi in the corner, plush white carpet… He stared around the room, trying to fathom precisely why he had the subtle feeling that something was not quite right. It was more a vague sensation than anything definite.

He heard the muffled groan of a labouring engine and rejoined Lincoln in the lounge.

Two minutes later Kendrick, the scene-of-crime team chief, appeared at the door with three other officers, and Standish and Lincoln went over their findings.

The tech from the Station turned up shortly after that and knelt over the corpse, examining the woman’s implant with the aid of a case full of equipment, scanners and a softscreen, and other implements Standish didn’t recognise.

Kendrick drew Standish to one side. “They’re bringing in a chap from Manchester, inspector. I know technically this is your territory, but the commissioner’s decided he wants the big boys in.”

Standish opened his mouth to complain, then thought better of it. Kendrick was merely the messenger; it would achieve nothing to vent his frustration on the scene-of-crime chief.

Twenty minutes later Lincoln clapped him on the shoulder. “Heading past the Dog and Gun? Fancy a quick one?”

“You’re a mind-reader, Richard. Lead the way.”

They retreated with their pints of Old Peculier to the table beside the fire. The barroom of the Dog and Gun was empty but for themselves and half a dozen youngsters at the far end of the bar. The kids wore the latest silvered fashions—uncomfortably dazzling to the eye—and talked too loudly amongst themselves. As if we really want to hear their inane views of life in the twenty-first century, Standish thought.

“What is it, Doug?” Lincoln asked, reducing the measure of his pint by half in one appreciative mouthful.

“What’s happened to society over the past ten years, Richard?”

Lincoln smiled. “You mean since the coming of the Kéthani? Don’t you think things have got better?”

Standish shrugged. “I suppose so, yes.” How could he express his dissatisfaction without sounding sorry for himself? “But… Okay, so we don’t die. We don’t have that fear. But what about the quality of the life we have now?”

Lincoln laughed. “You’ve been reading Cockburn, right?”

“Never heard of him.”

“A Cambridge philosopher who claims that humankind has lost some innate spark since the arrival of the Kéthani.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Standish said. He took a long swallow of rich, creamy ale. “It’s just that… perhaps it’s me. I lived so long with the certainties of the old way of life. I knew where I belonged. I had a job that I liked and thought useful…”

At the far end of the bar, one of the kids—a girl, Standish saw—threw her lager in the face of a friend, who didn’t seem to mind. They laughed uproariously and barged their way from the pub. Seconds later he saw them mount their motorcycles and roar off, yelling, into the night.

“All the old values have gone,” he said.

“The world’s changing,” Lincoln said. “Now that we no longer fear death, we’re liberated.”

Standish smiled and shook his head. “Liberated from what—what freedom have we found? The freedom to live shallow, superficial lives? Perhaps it’s my fault,” he went on. “Perhaps I was an old fart before the aliens came, and now I’m too set in my ways to change.” That was a glib analysis, he thought, but it hinted at some deeper, psychological truth.

Lincoln was watching him. “Don’t you think about the future, and feel grateful for what we’ve got?”

Standish considered this. “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m struck by the greater uncertainty of things. Before we had the certainty of death— oblivion, if you had no faith. Now we come back to life and go among the stars… and that seems almost as terrifying.”

Lincoln contemplated his empty glass for a second or two, then said, “Another pint?”

“You’ve twisted my arm.”

Lincoln returned, sat down, and regarded Standish in silence for a while. “How’s things with Amanda?” The question was asked with the casual precision of a psychiatrist getting to the heart of his patient’s problem.

Standish shrugged. “About the same. It’s been bad for a year or so now.” Longer, if he were to be honest with himself. It was just that he’d begun to notice it over the course of the past year.

“Have you considered counselling?”

“Thought about it,” he said. Which was a lie. Their relationship was too far gone to bother trying to save. Amanda felt nothing for him any more, and had said as much.

He shrugged and said, “There’s really not much to say about it, Richard. It’s as good as over.” He buried his head in his drink and willed the ferryman to change the subject.

It was over, he knew, but something deep within him, that innate conservatism again, that fear of change, was loath to be the one to admit as much. It was as if he lived in hope that things might change between them, become miraculously better.

But in lieu of improvement, he held onto what he had got for fear of finding himself with nothing at all.

Lincoln said, “Doug, perhaps you’d feel better about life in general if you could sort things out with Amanda, one way or another.”

Standish finished his pint, and said, too quickly, obviously trying to silence the ferryman, “One for the road?”

Lincoln looked at his watch. “Better not. I’ve an early start in the morning.” He stood. “Keep in touch, okay? How about coming over to the Fleece one night? There’s a great crowd there, and the beer’s excellent.”

Standish smiled. “I’ll do that,” he said, knowing full well that he would do nothing of the sort.

He sat for a while after Lincoln had left, contemplating his empty glass, then went to the bar for a refill. The room was empty, save for himself. He’d have a couple more after this one, then go home. Amanda would no doubt comment on the reek of alcohol and make some barbed remark about driving while over the limit, but by that time Standish would be past caring.

He thought about Sarah Roberts and the impossibility of her murder. The image of the woman, ethereally angelic, floated into his vision. The tech from the Onward Station had been unable to ascertain if Roberts could be saved, and seemed nonplussed at the dysfunction of her implant.

The entire affair had an air of insoluble mystery that made Standish uncomfortable. The unmarked snow, the circular melt, the failure of her implant… Perhaps it was as well that he wouldn’t be working on the case.

His mobile rang, surprising him. “Doug?”

“Amanda?” he said.

“I thought you said you’d be back by six?” Her clipped Welsh tone sounded peremptory, accusing.

“Something came up. I’m working late.”

“Well, I have to go out. Kath’s babysitter’s let her down at the last minute. I’ll be back around midnight. Your dinner’s in the microwave.”

“Fine. Bye—”

But she had cut the connection.

Five minutes later he finished his drink and was about to go to the bar for another when, through the window, he saw a small blue VW Electro halt at the crossroads, signal right, and then turn carefully on the gritted surface.

On impulse he stood and hurried from the bar. He was over the limit, but he gave it no thought as he slipped in behind the wheel of the Renault and set off in pursuit of the VW.

Amanda’s best friend, Kath, lived in Bradley, five miles in the opposite direction to where Amanda was heading now.

Seconds later, through the darkness, he made out a set of rear lights. The VW was crawling along at jogging pace. Amanda always had been too cautious a driver. He slowed so as not to catch her up, and only then wondered why he was following her.

Did he really want to know?

He wondered if Richard Lincoln’s last pearl of wisdom had provoked him into action. “Doug, perhaps you’d feel better about life in general if you could sort things out with Amanda, one way or another.”

Perhaps he’d had long enough of feeling powerless. Who had said that knowledge was power? He shook his head. The alcohol was fuddling his thinking. He really should turn around and go home, leave Amanda to whatever petty adultery she was committing.

He hunched over the wheel and concentrated on the road ahead.

Five minutes later they entered the village of Hockton and the VW slowed to a crawl and pulled into the kerb beside a row of stone-built cottages. Standish drove on, overtook the parked car, and came to a halt twenty metres further along the road.

He turned in his seat and watched as Amanda climbed out and hurried through the slush. A light came on in the porch of the cottage where she’d parked, and the figure of a man appeared in the doorway.

Amanda ran into his embrace, then slipped into the house. The light in the porch went out. The door closed. He imagined his wife in the arms of the stranger and then whatever else they might get up to in the hours before midnight.

The strange thing was that he felt no anger. No anger at all. Instead, he experienced a dull ache in his chest, like an incipient coronary, and a strange sense of disappointment.

Now he knew, and nothing could ever be the same again.

He turned his car and drove back past the house, noting the number. He would check on its occupant later, when he had thought through the implications of Amanda’s actions.

He drove home, considered stopping at the Dog and Gun for a few more, but vetoed the idea. Once home, he tried to eat the meal Amanda had left for him, managed half of it and threw the rest.

He went to bed, but not in the main bedroom. He slept in the guest room and wondered why he hadn’t had the guts to do so before now.

He was still awake well after midnight when Amanda got back. He heard her key in the front door and minutes later the sound of her soft footsteps on the stairs. He imagined her entering the bedroom and not finding him there, and the thought gave him a frisson of juvenile satisfaction.

A minute later she appeared in the doorway, silhouetted in the landing light behind her. “Doug? Are you okay?”

She was a small woman, dark-haired and voluptuous. He recalled the first time he had seen her naked.

He wanted to ask her why, but that would be to initiate a conflict in which he could only finish second-best. He knew why. She no longer loved him. It was as simple as that.

She waited a second, then said, “Pissed again, are you? Well, stay there, then.”

She pushed herself away from the jamb, and Standish said, “Don’t worry, I fully intend to.”

She hesitated, considering a rejoinder, but thought better of it and moved back to the main bedroom, turning off the landing light and filling the house with darkness.

Later, in the early hours, Standish awoke suddenly, startled by the burst of white light as the Onward Station beamed its freight of dead humans to the orbiting Kéthani starship.

That night he dreamed of angels.

He awoke early next morning and left the house before Amanda got up. It was another crystal clear, dazzlingly bright day. A fierce frost had sealed the snow overnight and the roads into Bradley were treacherous.

The desk-sergeant apprehended Standish before he reached his office and handed him a printout.

Detective Inspector Singh wanted to see him about the Roberts case.

“He’s here?” Standish asked.

The sergeant shook his head. “Up at the farmhouse with a forensic team.”

He drove from Bradley and over the moors, taking his time. He crested a rise and, before him, the spun-crystal pinnacle of the Onward Station came into view. It looked at its best in a setting of mow, he thought: it belonged. He wondered at the homeworld of the Kéthani, and whether it was a place of snow and ice.

How little we know of our benefactors, he thought as he arrived at the farmhouse.

A fall of snow during the night had filled in the footsteps made by Standish, Lincoln, and the others the evening before, but a new trail of prints led up the drive from two police cars parked outside the gate, now unlocked. He climbed from his car and hurried over to the house.

Detective Inspector R.J. Singh stood in the front room, arms folded across his massive stomach. He was a big man in a dark suit and a white turban, and when he spoke Standish detected a marked Lancastrian accent. “Inspector Standish. Glad you could make it. Good to have you aboard.”

“I hope I can help.” They shook hands, and Standish looked down at where, yesterday, the body of Sarah Roberts had sprawled.

Today, a series of holographic projectors recreated the image. It was the first time Standish had witnessed the technology at work, and he had to admit that it was impressive. But for the presence of the three small tripod-mounted projectors, he might have believed that the body was still in situ.

Even though he knew it was not the real thing, he still found it hard to look upon the ethereal beauty of the spectral image.

A couple of forensic scientists knelt in the corner of the room, minutely inspecting the carpet with portable microscopes.

Singh questioned him about the discovery of the body, and Standish recounted his impressions.

They moved across the room, to where a series of photographs had been spread out across the table. They showed the farmhouse and the surrounding snow-covered grounds from every angle.

“Not a clue,” Singh said, gesturing at the photographs. “Nothing. The killer came and went without leaving a trace. We’ve thought of everything. I don’t suppose you’ve come up with anything?”

He told Singh about his theory that the killer might have concealed himself somewhere in the house.

“Thought of that,” Singh said. “We went through the place with a fine-tooth comb.”

Standish shook his head. “I don’t know what else to suggest. I just can’t see how the killer did it.”

“I’ve studied the recordings of Roberts on the vid to the ferryman, Richard Lincoln,” Singh said. “No clues there, either. One minute she’s talking to Lincoln, and the next she goes to answer the door, comes back and… bang.”

Standish moved to the window and looked out. The melted circle that he had noted yesterday was filled now with the night’s snowfall.

“Did you see…?” he began.

Singh nodded. “One of the photos picked it up. I’m checking things like underground pipes. I don’t think it’s anything significant.” He looked around the room. “She certainly kept a tidy house.”

He had noticed that yesterday, Standish thought now, though then he’d hardly registered the fact. The place was as unlived in as a show house.

“I’ve been looking into Sarah Roberts’s past,” Singh said. “You might be interested in what I’ve discovered.”

Standish nodded. “Anything that might shed light—?”

Singh interrupted. “Nothing.” He smiled at Standish’s puzzlement. “The records go back three years, during her time with over half a dozen Onward Stations up and down the country. Before that, Sarah Roberts didn’t exist, officially, that is.”

“So ‘Sarah Roberts’ was an alias?”

“Something like that. We’re checking with the Ministry of Kéthani Affairs. Chances are that the whole thing will be taken away from us and declared classified. If she was important enough to work for the Ministry in some hush-hush capacity, then the killing might be deemed too sensitive a matter for us mere workaday coppers.”

“And you think the killing might have been linked to her work?”

“Impossible to tell. Between you and me, I don’t think we’ll ever find out.”

Standish let his gaze stray again to the projected image of Sarah Roberts. “Have the techs come up with any reason for the dysfunction of her implant?”

“They’re mystified. I wondered if it could have been linked to the killing—if the killer had in some way disabled it—but they simply couldn’t tell me. They’ve never come across anything like it.”

“And she’s… I mean, there’s no way they can save her?”

Singh pulled an exaggeratedly doleful face. “I’m afraid not. Sarah Roberts is dead.”

Standish averted his gaze from the ghost of the woman lying on the carpet, and asked, “Is it okay if I take another look around?”

“Be my guest. Forensics have almost finished.”

Standish climbed the stairs and inspected the bedrooms again. He was struck by the improbability of a woman in her mid-twenties choosing to sleep in a single bed. He looked around the room. It was remarkable only for the lack of personality stamped upon the room during the three months that Sarah Roberts had lived there: a brush and comb sat on a dresser, next to a closed make-up box. They looked like they had been placed there by stagehands, to give spurious authenticity to a set.

He moved to the bathroom, where yesterday he had been aware of something not quite right. Now he realised what he’d missed: the room was bare, no toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, hair-gels, hand creams, or toiletries of any kind.

Another damned mystery to add to all the others.

He returned downstairs and found the detective inspector in the kitchen, peering into the fridge.

“Strange,” Singh said when he saw Standish. “Empty. Nothing, not even a pint of milk.”

Standish told him about the empty bathroom.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Singh said to himself.

“I might go over to the Onward Station and talk to the Director,” Standish said. “If you don’t mind my trespassing on your territory, that is?”

“Let’s share anything we come up with, okay?” Singh said. “God knows, I need all the help I can get.”

Standish took his leave of the farmhouse and motored across the moors to the looming monument of the alien Station. A new fall of snow had started, sifting down from a slate-grey sky. He found himself trailing a gritter for half a mile, delaying his arrival.

He thought about Sarah Roberts, her existence as pristine as the surrounding snow, and wondered if he would learn anything more from the Director.

Five minutes later he parked in the shadow of the Station and stepped through the sliding glass doors. The decor of the interior matched the arctic tone of the landscape outside. He’d only ever visited the Station once before, for the returning ceremony of a fellow policeman, and now he recalled the unearthly atmosphere of the place, the cool, quiet otherness of the white corridors and the spacious, minimally furnished rooms.

He showed his identification to a blue-uniformed receptionist and he was kept waiting for almost thirty minutes before the Director consented to see him.

The receptionist escorted him down a long white corridor, carpeted in pale blue, and left him in front of a white door. It slid open to reveal a stark room with a desk like an ice-table standing at the far end, before a floor to ceiling window that looked out over the frozen landscape.

The room seemed hardly more hospitable than the terrain outside.

A tall, attenuated man rose from behind the desk and gestured Standish to enter. Director Masters was in his fifties, severely thin and formal, as if his humanity had been leached by his involvement with such otherworldly matters as the resurrection of the dead.

They shook hands and Standish explained the reason for his visit.

“Ah,” Masters said. “The Roberts case. Terrible thing.”

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to ask a few questions about Ms. Roberts.”

“By all means. I’ll assist in any way possible.”

Standish began by asking what had been Sarah Roberts’s function at the Station.

Masters nodded. ”She was the Station’s liaison officer.”

“Which means?”

“She was the official who liaised between myself and my immediate superiors in Whitehall.”

“So technically she worked for the government?”

“That is so.”

“I presume you had daily contact with her?”

“I did.”

“And how did you find her? I mean, what kind of person would you say she was?”

Masters eased himself back in his seat. “To be honest, I found Ms. Roberts a hard person to get to know. There was the age difference, of course. But even so, she was very withdrawn and reserved. Other members of my staff thought the same.”

“She didn’t socialise with anyone from the Station?”

Masters smiled. “She wasn’t the kind of person to, ah… socialise.”

“University educated?”

“Oxford.”

Standish nodded. He was forming a picture of Roberts that in all likelihood was nothing like the person she had been. No doubt somewhere there was a mother and father, perhaps even a lover.

“Were you aware of anyone who might harbour a grudge or resentment against Ms. Roberts?”

“Absolutely not. She hardly interacted with anyone in any way that might have caused resentment or suchlike.”

“Do you by any chance have a personnel dossier on Ms. Roberts?”

Masters hesitated, then nodded. He leaned towards a microphone. “Danielle, could you bring in the Sarah Roberts file, please?”

Two minutes later Standish was leafing through a brief, very brief, document which listed Roberts’s other postings at Onward Stations around the country, and little else. There was no mention of her work before she joined the Ministry of Kéthani Affairs, nothing about her background or education.

But there was a photograph. It showed a fey, fair, beautiful woman in her early twenties, and Standish found it haunting.

He pulled the picture from its clip and asked Masters, “I don’t suppose I could keep this?”

“I’ll get Danielle to make a copy,” Masters said, and called his secretary again.

For the next ten minutes, before Director Masters rather unsubtly glanced at his watch to suggest that time was pressing, Standish questioned the Director about Roberts’s work. He learned that she collected data about the day-to-day running of the Station, the processing of the dead from the area, and passed the information on to a government department in London. Masters could tell him no more than that, or was unwilling to do so.

Standish thanked the director and left the Station. He sat in his Renault for ten minutes in contemplative silence, staring at the stark magnificence of the alien architecture, before starting the car and driving into Bradley.

He spent the afternoon in his office, processing what in the old days would have been called paperwork. He took time out to look up the identity of his wife’s lover, then finished his shift at six.

That night he ate a steak and kidney pie in the Dog and Gun, drank more than was healthy, and at closing time was sitting by himself next to the open fire and staring at the photograph of the dead woman.

She reminded him of… what was the name of the Elf Queen from that old film, The Lord of the Rings? Anyway, she looked like the Elf Queen.

Serene and fey and… innocent?

He replaced the photograph in his breast pocket and left the pub. Electing to leave the car, he walked unsteadily along a lane made treacherous by black ice. It was after midnight when he arrived home. Thankfully Amanda was already in bed.

He slept in the guest room again, and awoke only when the bright white light from the Onward Station reminded him of his destiny, and the dead woman who would never live again.

The following morning he slipped from the house before Amanda got up, drove into Bradley and began work. Around eleven, R.J. Singh looked into the office and they discussed the case. Standish recounted his meeting with Director Masters and both men agreed that they were getting nowhere fast.

He had a quick sandwich in the staff canteen and after lunch returned to the routine admin work. By four, his eyes were sore from staring at the computer screen. He was considering going down to the canteen for a coffee when his mobile rang.

It was Richard Lincoln.

“Richard, how can I help?”

“It’s about the Roberts affair,” Lincoln said. “It might not amount to much, but a friend thought he saw something in the area on the afternoon of the murder.”

“Where can I contact him?”

“Well, we’re meeting in the Fleece in Oxenworth tonight, around seven. Why don’t you come along?”

“I’ll do that. See you then. Thanks, Richard.”

He refuelled himself with that promised coffee and worked for a further couple of hours. Just after six he left the station and drove over the moors to Oxenworth, a tiny village of a dozen houses, two converted mills, a local store-cum-post office and a public house.

He arrived early and ordered scampi and chips from the bar menu. He was on his second pint when Richard Lincoln pushed through the swing door from the hallway, followed by a man and a woman in their forties.

Lincoln introduced the couple as Ben and Elisabeth Knightly; Ben was a dry-stone waller, Elisabeth a teacher at Bradley comprehensive. They had the appearance of newly-weds, Standish thought: they found each other’s hands beneath the table when they assumed no one was looking and established eye contact with each other with charming regularity.

It reminded him of the early days with Amanda… Christ, was it really twenty years ago, now?

Ben Knightly said, “I read about the murder in this morning’s paper…”

Standish nodded. “We’ve got no further with the investigation, to be honest. We need all the help we can get. Richard mentioned you saw something.”

Ben Knightly was a big man with massive, outdoor hands. When he wasn’t holding his wife’s hand beneath the table, he clutched his pint, as if nervous. “I was working in the Patterson’s top field,” he said hesitantly. “I was just across the valley. It was around four, maybe a bit later.”

“How far were you from the Roberts’ farmhouse?” Standish asked, wondering exactly how far away “just across the valley” might be.

“Oh, about a mile, maybe a little bit less.”

Standish halted his pint before his lips. “And you say you saw something. From that distance?”

Knightly glanced at his wife, then said, “Well, it wasn’t hard to miss…”

A helicopter, Standish thought, his imagination getting the better of him. A hot-air balloon?

“At first I thought it was a shooting star,” Knightly said. “I see them all the time, but not quite that early. But this star just went on and on, dropping towards the earth. I thought at first it was a beam bringing the returnees home, but it wasn’t heading for the Station.”

Standish nodded, wondering where this was leading. “Where did it fall?”

Ben Knightly shrugged his big shoulders. “It went down behind the trees next to the Roberts’ house.”

Standish looked at Lincoln. “A meteorite? I’m not very up on these things.”

“Meteorites usually come in at an acute angle,” the ferryman said, “not straight down.”

“I thought I was seeing things,” Knightly said. “But when I read about the murder…”

Standish shook his head. “I really don’t see how…” Then he recalled the melted patch outside the back door of the farmhouse.

The conversation moved on to other things, after that. A little later they were joined by more people, friends of Lincoln. Standish recognised an implant doctor from Bradley General, Khalid Azzam, and Jeffrey Morrow and Dan Chester, another ferryman.

They were pleasant people, Standish thought. They went out of their way to make him feel part of the group. He bought a round and settled in for the evening. The ferrymen talked about why they had chosen their profession, and perhaps inevitably the topic of conversation soon moved round to the Kéthani.

“Come on, you two,” Elisabeth said to Richard and Dan, playfully. “You come into contact with returnees every day. They must say something about the Kéthani homeworld?”

Lincoln smiled. “It’s strange, but they don’t. They say very little. They talk about the rehabilitation process in the domes, conducted by humans, and then what they call ‘instructions’, lessons in Zen-like contemplation, again taught by humans.”

Dan Chester said, “They don’t meet any Kéthani, or leave the domes. The view through the domes is one of rolling hills and vales—probably not what the planet looks like at all.”

Standish looked around the group. They were all implanted. “Have you ever,” he said, marshalling his thoughts, “had any doubts about the motives of the Kéthani?”

A silence developed, while each of the people around the table considered whether to answer truthfully.

At last Elisabeth said, “I don’t think there’s a single person on the planet who hasn’t wondered, at some point. Remember the paranoia to begin with?”

That was before the returnees had returned to Earth, miraculously restored to life, with stories of the Edenic alien homeworld. These people seemed cured not only in body, but also in mind, assured and centred and calm… How could the Kéthani be anything other than a force for good?

Standish said, “I sometimes think about what’s happened to us, and… well, I’m overcome by just how much we don’t know about the universe and our place in it.”

He shut up. He was drunk and rambling.

Not long after that the bell rang for last orders, and it was well after midnight before they stepped from the warmth of the bar into the sub-zero chill of the street. Standish made his farewells, promising he’d drop in again but knowing that, in all likelihood, in future he would do his drinking alone at the Dog and Gun.

He contemplated taking a taxi home, but decided he was fit enough to drive. He negotiated the five miles back to his village at a snail’s pace, grateful for the gritted roads.

It was well after one o’clock by the time he drew up outside the house. The hall light was blazing, and the light in the kitchen, too. Was Amanda still up, waiting for him? Had she planned another row, a detailed inventory of his faults and psychological flaws?

He unlocked the front door, stepped inside, and stopped.

Three big suitcases filled the hallway.

He found Amanda in the kitchen.

She was sitting at the scrubbed-pine table, a glass of Scotch in her hand. She stared at him as he appeared in the doorway.

“I thought I’d better wait until you got back,” she said.

“You’re leaving?” He pulled out a chair and slumped into it. What did he feel? Relief, that at last someone in this benighted relationship had been strong enough to make a decision? Yes, but at the same time, too, a core of real regret.

“Who is she?” Amanda asked, surprising him.

He blinked at her. “Who’s who?”

She reached across the table and took a photograph from where it was propped against the fruit bowl.

“I found it in the hall this morning. Who is she?”

It was the snap of Sarah Roberts he’d taken from the Station yesterday. Instinctively he reached for his breast pocket. The photograph must have slipped out last night when he’d tried to hang his jacket up.

“Well?” She was staring at him, something very much like hatred in her eyes.

A part of him wanted to take her to task over her hypocrisy, but another part was too tired and beaten to bother.

“It has nothing to do with you,” he said.

“I’m going!” she said, standing.

He watched her hurry to the kitchen door, then said, “Staying with… what’s his name? Jeremy Croft, in Hockton?”

She stopped in the doorway, turned, and stared at him. He almost felt sorry for her when she said, “I met him last year, Doug, when things were getting impossible here. I wanted someone to love me, someone I could love.”

“I’m sorry you couldn’t find that with me.”

She shook her head. “Sometimes these things just don’t work, no matter how hard you try. You know that.” She hesitated, then said, “I hope you find what you want with…” She gestured to the snap of Sarah Roberts on the kitchen table, then hurried into the hall.

He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of trying to correct her.

He heard her open the door and struggle out with the cases. He pushed himself upright and moved into the hall.

He pulled open the door and stepped outside. Amanda was driving away.

Strangely, he no longer felt the cold. In the silence of the night, he walked from the house and stood in the lane, staring up at the massed and scintillating stars.

Then he saw a shooting star—denoting a death, somewhere—and then he knew. It was as if he had known all along, but the sight of the shooting star had released something within him, allowing him the insight.

It made sense. Sarah Roberts, a woman without a past, living in a pristine house, empty of all the trivial products of the modern world. It made perfect sense. Perhaps, after all, she was an angel.

Laughing to himself, he staggered back inside and shut the door behind him. He moved to the lounge, collapsed on the sofa, and slept.

That night, not even the pulsing light from the Onward Station could wake him from his dreams.

He woke late the following morning, dragged from sleep by something indefinable working at the edge of his consciousness. He lay on his back and blinked up at the ceiling, recalling the events of the night before and sensing the start of a debilitating depression.

Then he became aware of what had awoken him: his phone, purring in the pocket of his jacket where he’d dropped it last night.

He pulled his jacket towards him and fumbled with the phone. “Standish here.”

“Inspector Standish? Director Masters at the Station. I wonder if you could spare me a little of your time?”

“Concerning Roberts…?”

“Not over the phone, inspector.”

“Very well. I’ll be right over.”

The Director thanked him and rang off.

He splashed his face with cold water, brushed his teeth and then made his way out to the car, his head throbbing from too many beers in the Fleece last night.

It was another sunny morning. He wondered what Amanda was doing now. As he drove through the quiet lanes and over the moors, towards the Onward Station, he imagined her in the arms of her lover.

At the sight of the rearing obelisk, he recalled what had come to him in the early hours, as he stood staring up at the spread of stars.

It seemed, in the harsh light of day, highly improbable.

He left his Renault in the parking lot and stepped through the sliding door. Director Masters himself was on hand to greet him.

“If you’d care to step this way.”

He led Standish along a white corridor. They came at last to a sliding door, but not that of Masters’s office.

The door eased open without a sound, and the director gestured Standish through.

He stepped into a small, white room, furnished only with a white, centrally located settee. He heard the door click shut behind him, and when he turned to question Masters he realised that the director had left him alone in the room.

A minute elapsed, and then two. Vaguely uneasy, without quite knowing why, he sat on the settee and waited.

Almost immediately a concealed sliding door opposite him opened quickly, and he jumped to his feet.

Someone stepped through the opening, backed by effulgent white light, and it was a second before his vision adjusted.

When it did, he could only stare in disbelief.

A slim, blonde woman stood before him. She was dressed in a white one-piece suit. Her expression, as she stared at him, was neutral.

It was Sarah Roberts.

He opened his mouth, but no words came. Then he looked more closely at the woman before him. It was almost Roberts, but not quite; there was a slight difference in the features, but enough of a similarity for the woman and Roberts to be sisters.

Standish managed, “Who are you?”

She smiled. “I think you know that, Doug.” It was the familiarity of her using his first name that shocked him, as much as what she had said.

“I was right? Roberts was…?”

She inclined her head. “This soma-form, and variations upon it, is how we show ourselves on Earth.”

His vision blurred. He thought he was going to pass out.

Was he one of the few people ever to knowingly set eyes on a member of the Kéthani race?

“Why? I mean—”

“We need to come among you from time to time, to monitor the progress of our work.”

“But this…” He gestured at her. “This isn’t how you appear in reality?”

She almost laughed. “Of course not, Doug.”

“What do you look like?”

She regarded him, then said, gently, “You would be unable to apprehend our true selves, or make sense of what you saw.”

He nodded. “Okay…” He took a breath. His head was pounding, with more than just the effects of the hangover. “Okay, so… what do you want with me? Why did you summon me here? Is it about—?”

She smiled. “The killing of the woman you knew as Sarah Roberts.”

“The light from the sky,” he said, “the patch of melted snow outside the farmhouse…” He shook his head. “Who killed her?”

“There is so much you don’t know about the Kéthani,” the woman said, “so much you have to learn. Like you, we have enemies. There are races out there who do not agree with what we are doing. Sometimes, these races act against us. Two nights ago, three enemy agents came to various locations on Earth to assassinate our envoys. They escaped before we could apprehend them.”

He nodded, let the seconds elapse. “Why do they object to what you’re doing?”

She smiled. “In time, Doug, in time. You will die, be reborn, and eventually go among the stars. Then you will learn more than you can possibly imagine.”

“Why have you told me this?”

“We want you to solve the crime,” she replied. “You will return to the farmhouse and search it. You will find a concealed space behind a bookcase in the main bedroom. You will assume that the killer hid there, emerged, and killed Sarah Roberts, stole her jewellery box, then escaped a day later using the cover of the tracks in the snow made by you and your colleagues.”

It was his turn to smile. “But I know what really happened,” he began.

“You do now,” she said, “but when you leave the Station you will remember nothing of our meeting.”

He was overcome, then, with some intimation of the awesome power of the Kéthani, and his people’s ignorance.

“You are a good person, Doug.” The woman smiled at him, with something like compassion in her eyes. “Let what has happened to you of late be the start of a new life, not the end.”

He was suddenly aware of his pulse. “How do you know?”

“We know everything about you,” the alien said. She stepped forward and reached up.

Her fingers touched the implant at his temple, and he felt a sudden dizziness, followed by an inexplicable, heady surge of optimism.

“The implants allow us access to your very humanity,” she said. “Goodbye, Doug. Be happy.”

She stepped through the sliding door, and seconds later the door to the corridor opened and Standish passed through. Masters’s secretary escorted him towards the exit.

By the time he left the Station, Standish could only vaguely recall his meeting with Director Masters. He blamed the effects of the alcohol he’d consumed last night, and headed towards his car.

It came to him that he should check the farmhouse again. There had to be a rational explanation of what had happened there the other day. Murderers simply did not appear out of the blue and vanish again just as inexplicably.

He paused and gazed over the snow-covered landscape, marvelling at its beauty. He recalled Amanda’s leaving last night and it came to him that it wasn’t so much the end of his old life, but the beginning of a new phase of existence. He experienced a sudden, overwhelming wave of optimism. He recalled the invitation from Lincoln and the others to join them at the Fleece again, and knew in future that he would.

Smiling to himself, without really knowing why, Standish started the engine and drove slowly away from the Onward Station.