The Mandel Files (69 page)

“Are you Julia Evans’s lover, Greg?”

Eleanor refused to snap the retort which had formed so temptingly in her mind. Instead she furced a contemptuous smile, thinking how good it would feel to stuff that tabloid channel reporter’s cybofax where the sun didn’t shine.

The bobbies finished clearing away the cones and waved Eleanor on. They could have cleared them away before we arrived, she thought; perhaps it’s part of the needling, making us run the press gauntlet.

The Chater valley was a lush all-over green, the steep walls bulging in and out to form irregular glens and hummocks. Dead hawthorn hedges acted as trellises for ivy-leaf pelargoniums, heavy with hemispherical clusters of cerise-pink flowers. The fields were all given over to grazing land, although there was no sign of any animals; the permanent grass cover helped to prevent soil erosion in the monsoon season. As they moved over the brow on the northern side she began to appreciate how secluded the valley was, there had been no clue of its existence from the road out of Braunston.

They started to go down a slope with a vicious incline. The road was reduced to two strips of tarmac just wide enough for the EMC Ranger’s tyres, speedwells forming a spongier strip between them, tiny blue and white flowers closed against the darkening sky. Trickles of water were running out of the verges, filling the tarmac ruts. Eleanor slowed down to a crawl.

“Mr Mandel,” Amanda said. There was such a sheepish tone to her voice Eleanor actually risked glancing from the road to check her in the mirror.

Greg looked back over his shoulder. “What is it?”

“There was something else we didn’t release to the press,” Amanda said. “Kitchener had a lightware number cruncher at the Abbey, he used it for numerical simulation work. Its memory core was wiped. I didn’t think about it until you mentioned Event Horizon’s involvement. Whatever Kitchener was working on, it’s lost for good now.”

“No messing?” Greg said. He sounded almost cheerful.

“We weren’t sure if the ‘ware had been knocked out by the storm or something. We didn’t really connect the two events. But if you take commercial sabotage as a motive for the murder, then it was probably deliberate.”

“Do you know when the core was wiped?” Greg asked. “Before Kitchener was murdered? After? During?”

“No. I’ve no idea.”

“What did the students say?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember if they were asked.”

Greg thought for a moment, then started defining a search program that would run through the statements stored in his cybofax. Eleanor heard Amanda doing the same thing. That was when they reached a really steep part of the road, just above the Chater itself. She put the RMC Ranger into bottom gear, and kept her foot on the brake pedal. The water channelled by the ruts was running a couple of centimetres deep around the tyres.

“Are you sure about the bridge?” she asked Amanda.

“It should be passable by now. There was only a five-centimetre fall last night.”

“You mean you don’t know?” There was a bend at the foot of the slope. Eleanor nudged the EMC Ranger round it, dreading what she’d see. Turning round here would be difficult. Right at the bottom of the valley the river had worn a cramped narrow gully in the earth. The scarp had been scoured of grass and weeds by the recent monsoon floods, leaving a pockmarked face of raw red-brown earth. Ahead of the EMC Ranger the road had miraculously reappeared in full, grass, moss, nettles, and speedwells swept away by the water.

The Panda car was holding back, she caught a glimpse of it on top of the final slope.

Waiting for us to find out what the river is like, she thought, bastards.

“We’re waterproof, remember,” Greg said. He winked.

She grinned savagely, and urged the EMC Ranger along the last ten metres to the bridge. The Chater was a turbulent slash of fast-flowing brown water, boiling over the bridge. Eleanor used the white handrail as a guide as she gingerly steered over it. Water churned around the wheels. She estimated it was about fifteen centimetres deep, not even up to the axle.

Once they were over the river, the road turned right. Greg pulled at his lower lip, looking back thoughtfully. The smaller Panda car was edging out over the bridge, water up to the base of its doors.

“Tell you, Jon Nevin was right; nothing would have got over that on Thursday night and Friday morning,” Greg said.

There was a lake ahead of them, a rectangle fifty metres long, draining into the Chater through a crumbling concrete channel. A small earth bank rose up behind it, sprouting dead horse-chesnut trees which were leaning at precarious angles.

They started to climb up the slope, a dreary expanse of scrimpy, slightly yellowed grass. The road surface on this side of the Chater was even worse than the northern side. Past the end of the first lake, and ten metres higher, was a second, a triangular shape, a hundred metres along each side. It was being fed by a waterfall at the head. A decrepit wooden fence slimed with yellow-green lichen ran around it.

“Stop here,” Greg said.

Eleanor pulled up level with the end of the lake. She guessed there was another above them.

Greg opened the door and got out, standing in front of the bonnet, staring at the lake. His eyes had that distant look, the gland neurohormones unplugging him from the physical universe. A world sculpted from shadows, he’d said once, when he tried to describe the way neurohormones altered his perception, similar to a photon amp image, everything dusty and grainy. But translucent; you could see right through the planet if you had enough strength. The shadows are analogous to the fabric of the real world—houses, machinery, furniture, the ground, people. But not always. There are... differences. Additions. Memories of objects, phantasms I suppose.

And I can perceive minds too. Separate from the body. Minds glow, like nebulas with a supergiant star hidden at the core.

The remoteness faded from his face. He gave the lake a last look, fingers stroking his chin, a faintly puzzled expression pulling at his features.

“What did you see?” she asked as he got back into the passenger seat. His intuition was almost as strong as his empathy. When they first looked round the farmhouse on the Hambleton peninsula he had suddenly grabbed hold of her as she walked into one of the small upstairs bedrooms. He couldn’t give a reason, just that she shouldn’t go in. When they gave it a thorough examination they found that a whole section of the floorboards in front of the door was riddled with woodworm. If she had just marched in she would have fallen straight through.

“Not sure,” Greg said.

The Panda car was lumbering up the road behind them.

Eleanor started off towards the third lake. The first tiny spots of drizzle began to graze the windscreen.

“A microlight landing spot?” she asked.

“No.”

Amanda was giving them a slightly bemused look from the back seat.

The third lake was a slightly larger version of the second. She could see the ruins of a small brick building situated halfway up the earth bank on the far side. She thought it might be an ancient ice-house. A flock of Canada geese were grazing round the thick tufts of reedy grass which flourished around the shore.

“I’m sure I remember reading something else about Launde Abbey,” Greg said. “Or maybe it was on a channel newscast.”

“I can’t remember anything,” Eleanor said.

“It was a few years ago. I think. Seven or eight, maybe more.” He didn’t sound very convinced. “What about you, Amanda? Have there been any other incidents up here?”

“No, not that I can recall.”

“What sort of incident?” Eleanor asked.

He gave her an abashed grin. “Can’t remember. Definitely something newsworthy, though.”

“And it’s connected to the Kitchener murder?” she asked.

“Lord knows. I doubt it, not that long ago.”

Launde Abbey was another hundred and fifty metres past the third lake, set in a broad curving basin that seemed to have been chiselled into the side of the valley. A wooden fence marked the boundary of the parkland. The EMC Ranger rattled over a cattle grid, and the grass magically reverted to a shaggy verdant green. Large black tree stumps were scattered about, each one accompanied by a new sapling—kauri pines, giant chinquapins, torreyas—healthy replacements that relished the heat, turning the park back to its original rural splendour. Tarmac reappeared under the tyres. Eleanor turned off the road which disappeared over the brow of the basin, and drove down the loop of drive to the Abbey.

She was somewhat disappointed with what she saw. She’d been expecting some great medieval monastery, all turrets and flying buttresses: reality was a three-storey Elizabethan manor house, built from ochre stone, with a broad frontage and projecting wings. The roof of grey-blue slate was broken by five gables, a row of solar panels capping the apex. There were two sets of chimney-stacks, one on each wing; three cream-white globes were perched amid the southern wing’s stacks, weather coverings for the satellite dishes. Climbing roses scrambled over the stonework around the porch, scarlet and yellow blooms drooping from the weight of water they had absorbed, petals mouldering.

It backed on to a copse of high straggly pines, most of which had survived the Warming, their depleted ranks supplemented by some new banyan trees.

Two unmarked white vans and a Panda car were parked outside, belonging to the police crime scene team that had been combing the Abbey for clues since Friday. Eleanor drew up behind them. It was raining steadily and they made a dash for the porch.

A constable was waiting just inside, he saw Amanda and waved them all through. The interior was vaguely shabby, putting Eleanor in mind of a grand family fallen on hard times. The elegance still existed, in the furnishings, and décor—the staircase looked exquisite—but it had been almost neglected. Clean, but not polished.

Vernon Langley and Jon Nevin came in, shaking the rain from their jackets.

Langley took a breath. “I forgot to mention it before, Mandel,” he said. “But the Abbey’s lightware memory core has been wiped.”

“So Amanda told me,” Greg said drily.

Eleanor kept her grin to herself. One to the good guys.

“I see.” He straightened his jacket. “Well, we’ve set up shop in the dining room, if you’d like to come through.”

There was very little of the dining room table left visible. At one end the forensic team had set out their equipment, a couple of Philips laptop terminals and various boxy ‘ware modules which Eleanor guessed were analysers of some kind, although one looked remarkably like a microwave oven. The rest of the table, about three-quarters, was covered in sealed polythene sample bags. She could see clothes, shoes, books, hologram cubes, a lot of kitchen knives, glasses, memox crystals, small porcelain dishes, candlesticks, even an old windup type clock. Some of them looked completely empty. Dust, or hair, she thought.

She was still puzzling over why they’d want to seal up a potted cactus when Vernon Langley introduced Nicolette Hutchins and Denzil Osborne, a pair of forensic investigators who had stayed on to continue the in situ examination. They had been drafted in from Leicestershire, part of a ten-strong team which the Home Office had ordered to the Abbey. Both of them were wearing standard blue police one-piece overalls. Nicolette Hutchins was in her forties, a small woman, with a narrow, slightly worn face, her dark hair wrapped in a tight bun. She glanced up from one of the modules she was engrossed with, and held out her hands. “Excuse me for not shaking.” She was wearing surgeon’s gloves.

Denzil Osborne had the kind of build Eleanor associated with ex-professional sportsmen, muscle bulk which was startmg to round out and sag. He must have been in his late fifties, with a flat, craggy face, and receding blond hair tied into a neat pony-tail. He had a near permanent smile, showing off three gold teeth, a flashy anachronism.

He shook Greg’s hand warmly. Then his smile broadened even wider when he took Eleanor’s.

“And I’m very pleased to meet you.”

The play-acting made her grin. His genuine welcome was a refreshing change from the rest of the investigating team.

“So, you were in the Mindstar Brigade, were you?” Denzil asked Greg.

“Yeah.”

“I was in Turkey, Royal Engineers; worked with a Mindstar Lieutenant called Roger Hales.”

Greg smiled. “Springer.”

“That’s right.”

“We called him Springer because it didn’t matter what kind of booby trap the Legion left behind, Roger could always spot it and trip it,” Greg explained to Eleanor. “He had one of the best bloody short-range perceptive faculties in the outfit.”

“Saved my arse enough times,” Denzil said. “Those mullahs were getting plenty tricky towards the end of that campaign.”

“No messing,” Greg said.

“I was chuffed when I heard they were bringing you in. Our Nicolette here doesn’t believe what you blokes can do.”

“I do believe,” she said, not looking up from the analyser module. “I just get bored with hearing about it day in day out. You’d think Turkey lasted for a decade the number of stories you tell.”

“Well, don’t worry, Greg won’t bore you today,” Denzil said. “Far from it. Today is the day when this investigation gets moving again. Right, Greg?”

“Do my best.”

“You need something to fixate on?”

“No. I need data.”

Denzil’s eyebrows went up appreciatively. “Intuitionist?”

“Yeah.”

“OK, what do you want to start with?”

“The security system,” Eleanor said.

“No problems with that,” Denzil answered. “It’s all top-grade gear. Fully functional.”

“Could an intruder melt through it, and then back out again, without leaving a trace?” Greg asked.

“Hell, no, it’s built by Event Horizon; a customized job. Low-light photon amps, windows wired, internal-motion sensors, IR, plus UV laserscan. Unless your identity and three-dimensional image is loaded in the memory core you couldn’t move a millimetre inside the building without the alarm screaming for help. And it’s got a secure independent uplink to Event Horizon’s private communication satellite network as well as the English Telecom West Europe geosync platform. Why? You think somebody got in here?”