A Quantum Murder

by Peter F. Hamilton

"Half-past five is a funny time to be visiting Kitchener. Was there a reason?"

  She rubbed an index finger along the bottom of her nose. "So I would be there when he woke up. Edward didn't like to be alone."

  "Nicholas Beswick said you went into Kitchener's room at quarter-past one that morning. Is that true?"

  "Poor old Nicky. Yes, it's true. You want to know something else? I was having sex with Edward, I had been for three months. And to save you the trouble of working it out, he was forty-four years older than me."

  "You had sex with him at quarter-past one?"

  "Yes."

  "When did you leave?"

  "Isabel and I packed in about half-past two. Edward was nearly asleep by then anyway."

  "Why not stay?"

  "Edward snores. Silly, isn't it? But I'm a light sleeper, as well as being a virtual insomniac. I only need two or three hours' sleep each night. So out I creep after he's nodded off, then I get my head down for a while, and I'm back snuggled up beside him when he wakes. He probably knew, but ..."

  "So everybody would know that you left him alone for a few hours each night?"

  "Every peeping Tom, yes."

  "Which of the other students knew about you and Kitchener?"

  "I would say all of them. Even Nicky, though he would never dare talk about it outright."

  "So it was common knowledge?"

  "Yes."

  "What about the housekeeper and her staff?"

  "Oh, yes, Mrs Mayberry knew. You can't keep secrets from the person who collects your sheets."

  "Did you wash after you left Kitchener?"

  Rosette sat up straighter. "Pardon me?"

  "Did you wash, take a shower, bathe?"

  "Yes. I had a shower afterwards. I always do."

  "How long had Isabel Spalvas been having an affair with Kitchener?"

  Rosette gave him a derisive grin, and started to laugh. "I'm sorry. The way you said it. 'An affair'. Like some Victorian aunt. Rutland really is the back of beyond, isn't it? Are you married until death do us part, Mr Mandel? Or may I call you Greg? Eleanor seems like quite a spectacular girl, physique-wise, that is. I saw the two of you on the channel newscasts at lunchtime."

  "I'm happily married, thank you."

  "And Julia Evans, no less, was at the ceremony. Your bridesmaid."

  "Is that a problem for you?"

  "No, an observation."

  "Careful, your lawyer might stop this line of questioning." Matthew Slater shot Greg a look of undiluted malice. Rosette burst out laughing again.

  "Oh, yes," she said. "I can see why they sent for you. Nobody gets off the hook when you're on their case, do they, Greg?"

  "No. Now, Isabel Spalvas?"

  "She wasn't having an affair, or whatever else you want to call it, with Edward."

  "You said she was in his room for sex."

  "She was there for pleasure, for interest, for self-exploration. I'm not saying they didn't have sex. They did. She also took some syntho. Perhaps it made it easier for her."

  "Made what easier?"

  "Sex with Edward. Oh, he was still reasonably capable. But he was sixty-seven, after all. You couldn't ignore it; not lie back and think of England. She found it difficult with me as well, to start with."

  "You and Isabel made love?"

  "I'm not sure about love, Greg, darling. But sex, yes. Edward enjoyed watching. She enjoyed it too, eventually, when the syntho was really boosting her. Am I turning you on, Greg?"

  "No."

  "Really? You surprise me. The first time I made this statement, all the boys in the office found an excuse to listen in." She cocked her head at Nevin. "Didn't you, Jonnie darling?"

  Greg caught his mind clogging with fierce embarrassment.

  "Was there any pressure placed on female students to sleep with Kitchener?" he asked.

  "Not if you mean blackmail. Come to bed with me or I kick you out of the Abbey. Edward doesn't need to, he is ... intriguing. Girl students are almost a double bluff. You understand? He tells the world he does. He tells us he wouldn't dream of it. And there he is, one of the geniuses of the age, complete with wicked reputation. Always there, day in, day out. He had this mockery for convention. He was so very clever at ridiculing any stricture society placed on his life. He makes you examine and challenge your own beliefs.

  "That's why Isabel had joined us, she was probing her own limits, finding out where they lie. You can do that with Edward there to guide you. He made us feel safe, we trusted him. He'd never let us hurt ourselves, not with drugs or sex, or radical politics come to that. He knew what we were capable of, and showed us how to achieve it, intellectually, emotionally, physically. Launde was an incredible experience, spiritual more than anything else." She shook her head softly, re-emerging from the vortex of reminiscence.

  Greg could perceive how sincere she was when she talked about Kitchener. Fondness for the old guru acted as a subtle reinforcement for the philosophies he had spun out. He was suddenly very curious about Edward Kitchener. How much of this professional dissident ideology had he believed in, all or none?

  "How long had Isabel been taking part in these sessions with you and Kitchener?"

  "Sessions! You have no soul, Greg, darling, no poetry. About a fortnight, I think. As soon as we came back from the New Year break."

  "Did Nicholas Beswick know that Isabel was becoming involved with Kitchener?"

  Rosette pursed her lips, contrite for once. Her thought currents were subdued. "Oh, dear little Nicky. No, he didn't know a thing about us until that night. Caught us sneaking down the corridor to Edward, he did. Such a shame. He is quite infatuated with Isabel, did you know that? Now that is authentic love, Romeo and Juliet revisited. Teasing him was such fun, it's so dreadfully easy. Nicky lacks that cosmopolitan touch necessary to survive adult life, he's just a country boy at heart. He makes me seem terribly jaded and old by comparison. Edward was delighted with him, of course."

  "Why, 'of course'?"

  "Because people like Nicky are the reason he founded Launde in the first place. Nicky is very intelligent, he's far smarter than I am. And if the four of you in this room were to add up your IQs, the figure would be less than half of mine. That gives you some idea of what he's like. But he's flawed; emotionally retarded, if you like. Edward called it perpetual adolescence. Whatever, Nicky has this terrible trouble relating to other people. And that is what Launde is for, to cure us of our adolescence, realign our thought patterns into sensible maturity. Edward plays the tyrant king to great effect, and the students bond together for mutual protection. You can't do anything else, survival depends on it. And for all its crudity, the technique works. Even with Nicky, although it was pretty slow going in his case, but there was definitely some progress. When he arrived, Nicky would sooner starve than ask someone to pass him a knife and fork.

  "Then the evening before Edward was killed, Nicky actually answered me back at supper. Me! Edward didn't stop talking about it for the rest of the evening, he was simply over the moon. Then I went and ballsed it up by getting caught when I went and fetched Isabel out to play. Naughty me."

  "So Nicholas Beswick would have been on an emotional roller-coaster that night?"

  Rosette's eyes narrowed. "Oh no you don't, Greg, darling. You're not pinning that perverted atrocity on Nicky. He wouldn't do that. Besides I was there when he came into the room and saw what had been done to Edward. He was in hysterics, worse than me. Go away and harass someone else, Greg. Not Nicky."

  "And how about you? Were you at all jealous that Kitchener was becoming involved with Isabel?"

  "My, my," she cooed. "And I thought I was a prime bitch. No, Greg, darling. I wasn't jealous. But I am disappointed. In you, darling. I thought you would be able to see why not. You should do. If you're any good, that is. Or is Mindstar like a rock star's codpiece, pumped up with hot air?"

  It was the tone which keyed him in. Greg concentrated on the shimmering thought currents in front of him, congeale
d with hauteur, and smug complacency. Something was helping her to recover from the anguish of Kitchener's death, the shock scars of the psyche were healing too rapidly. When he went deeper, he found her cherishing a brittle triumph. Intuition kicked in. He refocused his espersense, moving it down through her body, feeling the grainy texture of warm cells, a fast surge of blood through veins like velvet pipes, obtuse chemical reactions flared and died all around, nerves flashed like lightning conductors. He left her brain behind, slipping past her throat, neck, breasts, chest, further down.

  "Oh, shit," he said. "You're pregnant." The embryo hung in the centre of black and scarlet shadows, a delicate white porcelain sculpture, beautiful, tiny, and tragically fragile.

  "What?" Langley jerked upright.

  "This interview is now over!" Slater cried.

  Rosette slapped her hand against the desk as the detective and the lawyer started to shout at each other. "Not yet!" she yelled. "We haven't finished yet."

  Slater bent over her urgently, plucking at the arm of her black jacket. "Miss Harding-Clarke, I must insist you do not continue."

  "No." She waved him away. "You are afraid the child gives me a motive. That I can contest Edward's will on behalf of the baby. That's right, isn't it?"

  Slater glanced round at the detectives, his lips pressed together. "That is a likely argument for the prosecution, yes."

  "My family is richer than Edward. Money is irrelevant to me."

  "Please!" he implored her.

  "Are we still being recorded?" she asked.

  "Yes," Nevin said.

  Greg sat perfectly still. He could guess what was coming next. Like she said, she had an IQ well above average.

  "Excellent. Now I've been sitting patiently in this squalid filthy little room, and opened my soul to one of the most experienced and highly trained psychics in the country. I haven't held anything back, and I've answered every question put to me. Now, Greg darling, would you please tell everyone here whether I've been telling the truth."

  "You have," he said, awash with the sense of inevitability.

  "Did I kill Edward?"

  "No."

  "Thank you!" She stood up. A grinning Sister rose behind her.

  "Rosette?" Greg said.

  She turned, exasperation on her face. "Now what?"

  He pointed casually at the camera. "For the record, could you tell us which of the other students at Launde you slept with, please?"

  Her fists clenched and unclenched, long red nails leaving white imprints on the flesh of her palms. "Cecil," she said woodenly. "That's all."

  "Thank you, Rosette. No more questions."

  * * * *

  "You used to be Rosette's lover," Greg said.

  Cecil Cameron inclined his head reluctantly. "Yes. When she first came to Launde, last October. Talk about impact; we started screwing the day after she arrived."

  "How long did it last for?"

  "About a month."

  "Why did it end?"

  He shrugged expansively. "You've met Rosette. How long could you put up with her for?"

  Greg heard Vernon chuckling softly behind him. Lisa Collier, who was acting as Cecil's adviser, tapped on his arm, giving him a disapproving frown. "No opinions," she murmured.

  "I didn't even get on with her to start with," Greg said. "You obviously did."

  "For a while. I mean, don't get me wrong. Rosette and me are still good mates. But she's difficult to please. She thrives on variety, everything has to be fresh for her. Her tolerance threshold is non-existent. We burnt out. I knew it would right from the beginning. It was good while it lasted, mind. I mean, let's face it, she can take her pick."

  "Did she pick Kitchener?"

  "No. That was mutual attraction."

  "What were you doing on Thursday night after supper?"

  "Working on a project of Kitchener's; I was studying theoretical perturbations in electron orbits."

  "Were you interfacing with the Abbey's Bendix lightware cruncher?"

  "Yes. Why, you think I can do that kind of thing in my head?"

  "What time did you stop using the Bendix?"

  "About eleven o'clock."

  "Could you be more precise, please?"

  "Five past, ten past, something like that."

  "Was it functioning normally when you were interfacing with it?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you use the English Telecom datalink to access any 'ware cores outside the Abbey that night?"

  "No."

  "Did you use the datanet for anything that night?"

  "No."

  "What did you do after you stopped work?"

  "Rosette came in, that's why I stopped. We had a drink and a talk. The other four were in Uri's room. She doesn't get on terribly well with Liz, and Nick isn't exactly enthralling conversation at the best of times."

  "Do you like him?"

  "Who, Nick? Yeah, I don't mind him. He's a bit shy, but he's a sodding genius when it comes to physics. We all knew that."

  "How long was Rosette with you?"

  "Until after midnight—quarter-past, half-past maybe. She went off to see Kitchener then." He pulled an indignant face. "What a waste. Old man like that. Her choice, mind."

  "What about the other three students, how did you get on with them?"

  "Fine. Uri and Liz had been involved for a year. Uri's great, one of the lads. Liz too, come to that."

  "And what about Isabel?" Greg watched the conflicting emotional surges corrupt Cecil's thought currents, the twinges of guilt coupled with an almost paternal urge of protectiveness. Cecil was being pulled apart by indecision.

  "Nice girl. Bit disorientated by Abbey life, but she was coping."

  "Did you sleep with her?"

  "Hey! I said we were friends."

  "Your relationship is something more than an ordinary friendship, though."

  Cecil looked round at Lisa Collier for guidance.

  "It's a legitimate question," she said sourly.

  "You can tell that from my mind?" Cecil asked apprehensively.

  "Yeah."

  "OK. Well, I meant what I said, mind. We weren't screwing each other. Wish we had been, she's got a terrific body. I asked her often enough, but she wasn't keen. She said that it couldn't last, not with me leaving at the end of the year, so it would be pointless, she'd only wind up getting hurt. I might have managed to change her mind in the end. Still. . . I was happy enough playing big brother to her. There weren't many others she could turn to. I mean all that New Age crap Kitchener spouted about liberating your mind. Christ. The longest chat-up routine ever written. He said anything that would get them into bed with him, and they did as well, two by two. Isabel was confused by it. So we talked, that's all. Nick would have burst into tears if she'd told him what she was up to with Kitchener. As for Liz and Uri, hell, it's a miracle if they get out of bed for a meal! And Rosette, well she was with Kitchener."

  "Did Isabel come and talk with you that night?"

  "No."

  "You were taking syntho. Why was that?"

  Cecil drummed his kinaware fingers on the desk, black nails producing a tiny click on the smooth surface. "Because it was available. I never took much."

  "You infused some that night." Greg found himself staring at the silver-hued hand. Powerful enough to make the butchery easy?

  "Yes."

  "When?"

  "Rosette brought some in. I was bored. I'd been in the Abbey all day. We didn't even get out for a swim."

  "A swim?"

  "Yes, we usually went for a dip in the top lake in the afternoon. Mornings as well, if it was fine. We're all reasonable swimmers, even Nick."

  Greg hesitated, that ambiguous notion returned at the mention of the lake. What was it about those three lakes? He hadn't been able to explain, not even to Eleanor. It was more than intuition, there was memory involved as well. Something had happened at Launde, quite a while ago. For the life of him he couldn't think what. It was bloody annoying.


  "Was there ever anything unusual about those lakes?" he asked.

  "No, not as far as I know." Cecil gave Lisa Collier another mistrustful glance. She maintained her cantankerous expression, eyes not leaving Greg.

  "OK." Greg gave up. He touched a key on his cybofax, bringing up another page of questions. "Did you ever take any syntho with Isabel?"

  "Once or twice, yes. She was always timid about narcotics. Her background is very middle class."

  "Could anybody help themselves to Kitchener's stash?"

  "It wasn't kept under lock and key. I always asked him, or Rosette. He would have known if someone had been taking it. The only thing he was concerned about was that we didn't OD."

  "Tell me what happened when the body was discovered."

  "Christ. The screams woke me up. That was Rosette. By the time I got into the corridor Nick and Uri had already got there. I. . . went in to Kitchener's bedroom. . . Wish to God I hadn't. That was one sick fucker who did that, Mr Mandel. I mean seriously fucked."

  "I know."

  "Yes. Well. Nick was puking his guts up. Uri was in shock, he just stood there, like he wasn't seeing it. What do they call it? Thousand-metre stare. I think Rosette had fainted by then. Passed out, swooned, something. She'd stopped screaming anyway. I got in one look and tried to stop Liz and Isabel from going in."

  "When did they arrive?"

  "Right after me."

  "Both together?"

  "God, I don't know. Yes, more or less."

  "Did you see any movement in the corridor before you got to Kitchener?"

  "The murderer, you mean? No. If I had, I would have killed him."

  Lisa Collier gave a censorious cough.

  Cecil looked round at her. "I would have killed him," he repeated firmly.

  "When did you wash that night?" Greg asked.

  "When did I wash?"

  "Yeah."

  "About eleven o'clock. I had a shower. My conditioner couldn't cope with the storm. My room was like a sauna. I couldn't open the window, not with the rain we had that night."

  "OK, thanks, Cecil."

  "That's it?"

  "Yeah."

  "Aren't you going to ask me if I did it? I thought that's why they brought you here."

  "There's no need, not a direct question. It wasn't you."

  * * * *