“Sir?” prompted Shankar, after his superior officer had been silent for a good couple of minutes.
“Yes?”
“I was wondering if you might have any instructions.”
“We should give this place the once-over, I suppose, and call in the criminalists, for all the help they’ll be.” Parry rubbed a hand wearily up and down his face. “Christ, how shittily have I handled this?”
“Captain, you aren’t to blame for anything that’s happened this morning. It was simply bad luck and bad timing.”
“Good of you to say that, Ranjit, but I should have looked more carefully when I saw Dargomyzhsky lurking in the corridor, I should have made sure the door was shut, generally I should have been a bit more on the ball. Quesnel’s going to have my balls for earrings over this.”
“And very fetching they’ll look on her, I’m sure. But really, sir, this is not your fault, any of it.”
Parry nodded noncommittally. “Well, maybe not. But someone has to carry the can.”
“Captain’s privilege?”
“Precisely.” Parry slapped the tops of his thighs and got to his feet. “Oh well. On with the job. At least the worst has happened. I mean, things can’t get much more bollocksed-up than this, can they?”
An hour later he discovered that things, in fact, could.
He and Shankar had searched the room, not expecting to turn up anything useful and, sure enough, not doing so, and now they were awaiting the criminalists. Parry doubted that their examination of the room would prove any more fruitful than his and Shankar’s, but formalities had to be observed, and going through the motions, futile though it might be, was invariably better than doing nothing at all.
The telephone rang. Thinking it was the concierge down in the lobby calling to let him know the criminalists were here, Parry picked up the receiver.
“Boss?” It was Johansen. “I had a hunch you’d still be there. I got the room number off reception. You wouldn’t happen to be near a TV set, would you?”
“I would. Why?”
“You may want to check out News Network 24.”
Parry took the remote control from the bedside table and aimed it at the television unit in the corner of the room, thumbing the Current Affairs button. The wallscreen sprang into life, and he scrolled through the onscreen options menu until “News Network 24” was highlighted. He pressed Select, and immediately the screen was filled with a shaky, grainy palmcorder image of a smallish, balding man in FPP uniform. The man was standing in a hotel room, speaking directly to camera, his features underexposed and shadowy against a background flare of daylight. Superimposed on this, tucked in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, was the blockish, lapidary NN24 logo accompanied by the word “Exclusive”.
“Jesus, that’s me,” Parry said, and there were several weird moments of dislocation as he watched a news broadcast showing him standing and talking in the very same room in which he was now watching a news broadcast showing him standing and talking in the very same room in which ... and so on, like a neverending recursive loop, a mirror reflecting a mirror.
All at once the palmcorder image swerved diagonally downwards, and there was a hectic, juddering montage of carpet and feet, accompanied by the sounds of a scuffle and someone falling to the floor. Then the film-clip ended abruptly in a hissing snowstorm of static and the image cut to an anchorwoman, composed and immaculately coiffed at her desk, who informed viewers that the amateur video they had just seen had been recorded a little over an hour ago at the Debussy Hotel, and showed not just the retrieval of a corpse from a canal but what was clearly a set of Foreign remains on one of the hotel’s balconies. As the anchorwoman spoke, a composite illustration came up behind her, a rectangle divided in half by an angled line, on one side of which was a captured still of Dagmar Pfitzner’s floating body, on the other a captured still of the Foreign garments. The shout-line beneath the illustration was grimly clever, if perhaps predictable: “Death in New Venice”.
“Fast work,” Shankar commented, and Parry thought of the portable home board he had seen in the Dargomyzhskys’ room. Dargomyzhsky must have squirted the footage to the network over the phone-lines.
“Jack,” said Johansen on the phone, “would I be wrong in thinking that this incident looks much like the one at the Amadeus?”
“I’m afraid you wouldn’t.”
“Oh dear, this is not good.”
“Really, Pål. You don’t say.”
“No, I mean, this is truly not good, because the commissioner is downstairs right now telling a couple of dozen reporters about the Amadeus.”
Parry thought he must have misheard. “Run that by me again.”
“The press conference, boss. It was scheduled for this morning, remember?”
“I know it was scheduled for this morning. I rang and left Quesnel a message an hour ago advising her to cancel it.”
“Obviously she didn’t take the advice.”
And as if to confirm the truth of Johansen’s words, the anchorwoman announced that they were now going over live to New Venice FPP Headquarters, where Commissioner Céleste Quesnel was making an official statement about another human death and Foreign loss which had occurred earlier during the week (the anchorwoman laid a heavy, insinuating emphasis on the word another).
And there was Quesnel in the atrium of FPP HQ with a cluster of microphones in front of her, squinting a little against the glare of the news-crew arc lights but still managing to look assured and assuring as she spoke about the simultaneous suicides of Daryl Henderson and a Foreigner who had engaged Henderson’s services as a Siren.
And there, just behind her and to the side, half out of shot and slightly out of focus, was Raymond van Wyk, his head bowed, his expression suitably solemn and self-effacing (van Wyk always knew the right pose to strike when there were cameras around).
And the commissioner was describing the discovery of the human and Foreign remains in a hotel room – she could not, for reasons of confidentiality, say which hotel – and then she was using the word “shinju” and then the phrase “a rare and unique event, unlikely to be repeated”.
And Parry looked on agog, with a sensation in the pit of his stomach like a bolus of molten lead sinking and hardening, as Quesnel continued with her statement, delivering the sentences with such rhetorical fluency that you would never guess, unless you knew, that she was speaking without notes.
And she was saying how proud New Venice was of its reputation for safety – safety for its human inhabitants, of course, but especially for its Foreign visitors – and how there was no cause for anyone to be concerned by this unfortunate and tragic and, most of all, isolated occurrence.
And meanwhile, outside on the balcony, the Foreign remains lay, huddled and empty.
And now, furtively, like a secret leaking out, a soft, steady rain began to fall.
18. Furore
IN THE AFTERMATH of the morning’s events, Parry learned two things: first, that sometimes it is worse not being made a scapegoat than being made a scapegoat; and second, that whoever said there was no such thing as bad publicity deserves a damned good kicking.
As he had anticipated, it did not take long for the ladies and gentlemen of the news media to conclude that the incident at the Debussy Hotel was cast from the same mould as the earlier incident described by Commissioner Quesnel. For a couple of hours speculation was rife on News Network 24 that the scenes Mikhail Dargomyzhsky had filmed constituted evidence of a second shinju. With each quarter-hourly headline update the similarities between the two incidents were stressed with greater and greater emphasis, until eventually, by that alchemical journalistic process in which opinion transmutes into fact without the catalyst of official verification, the Debussy deaths were being referred to simply as a double suicide, no longer prefixed by moderating adjectives such as “probable” or “alleged”. Soon NN24’s exclusive was being reported on by all the other international twenty-four-hour news channel
s, which covered not only the story itself but also the story of the breaking of the story, in a kind of self-referential, postmodern approach to current events, news about news.
As the morning wore on, various talking heads were brought in to analyse and comment on Quesnel’s press statement, the Dargomyzhsky footage, and the whole phenomenon of shinju. Among them was François-Joseph Vieuxtemps, the Xenologist. Never one to shy away from an opportunity to go on television and plug his book, Vieuxtemps was the guest of no fewer than three different channels, and on each said virtually the same thing, namely that he had suspected for some while that just because Foreigners were genderless beings, this did not mean they were incapable of forming quasi-sexual attachments with humans, and that although he had not explicitly stated as much in Foreigners Are Neither From Venus Nor From Mars, although, indeed, the book might seem to make claims to the contrary, the inferences were there in the text for the intelligent reader to draw. The book was, of course, available from all the usual outlets.
Sirens were interviewed, too, and while most of them insisted that singing was merely a means of earning money and engendered little sense of kinship or empathy with the golden giants, one or two claimed that on occasion they had, through the act of singing, felt in some way connected with a Foreigner and had experienced feelings which, between humans, would have been called love, or at the very least affection.
Viola d’Indy had a taste of the limelight again as her views on the topic were sought. With the same wide-eyed candour she had exhibited during her meeting with Parry and Johansen, she told of her romance with the Foreigner she had dubbed Doh-Fa-Sol, and her tale was greeted with a lack of scepticism that some might say was healthy and others remarkable.
Xenophobes were also encouraged to air their opinions, and Toroa MacLeod, spokesperson for the New Venice branch of the movement, was particularly vehement in his condemnation of the deaths. “How else are we to regard this,” he said, the intricate patterning of dark-blue tattoos on his face tightening in a scowl, “but as yet one more example of the corrosive effects of Foreign culture on our own? I’m also appalled that the FPP is seeking to ‘exoticise’ the phenomenon by giving it a Japanese name – a cheap tactic, redolent of all the old prejudices about the brutal, inscrutable, sexually-perverted East.”
Poor old Klaus Lechner was dragged in front of the cameras. It had not taken long for investigative reporters to ascertain which hotel had been the site of the first two deaths, and while Lechner made a valiant stab at defending the good name of the Amadeus, you could tell by his eyes that he knew he was going to be losing custom as a result of this unfavourable exposure, and possibly his job.
And while all this was unfolding, Parry was summoned to Quesnel’s office and subjected to an icy dressing-down. Standing still in the centre of the room with his shoulders slightly hunched, he watched as Quesnel paced back and forth in front of him and listened as she addressed him in witheringly subdued tones about the need for discipline and efficiency within the FPP, the need for proper understanding between the various different sections of the division, and the need for the channels of communication up and down the chain of command to be open and clear and direct. She had just had a very thorny conversation with Dagmar Pfitzner’s mother in Stuttgart, trying to explain to her why her daughter’s death was broadcast on television before Frau Pfitzner herself had been notified about it. Before that she had fielded a long phone-call from NACA Liaison al-Shadhuli, who wanted to know, quite rightly, what the hell was going on. She had been made to look a fool on TV, the FPP had been seen to exhibit a level of competence that would have embarrassed the Keystone Kops, and as far as she could see the blame for all these things rested with just one person – Jack Parry.
Parry did not interrupt her to remonstrate, merely stood there and passively endured his chastisement, knowing that Quesnel had to vent her spleen on someone and that, since he was to a certain extent guilty as charged, the someone might as well be him. When, however, Quesnel finished her tirade and asked him if he had anything to say in his defence, he responded with a straightforward, blow-by-blow account of the morning’s events, relating everything he had seen and done since Shankar’s pre-dawn phone call. Quesnel heard him out till he reached the part where, unable to convince Dargomyzhsky to surrender the palmcorder disc, he had made the decision to call her and suggest she cancel the press conference.
“But obviously you forgot,” she said.
“Forgot?”
“About calling me.”
Parry frowned and shook his head. “No. No, ma’am, I have to say that I phoned from the Debussy and left a message on your work board.”
“Jack.” Quesnel sounded disappointed. “You, of all people.”
“Ma’am?”
She spelled it out to him, as though to a child. “You didn’t leave any message. Why make out as if you did?”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I definitely rang and I definitely left a message.”
Quensel’s eyes narrowed. “At what time, exactly?”
“At least an hour before the press conference. I called you at home as well. You weren’t in.”
The commissioner looked puzzled now. “An hour before the press conference? Are you sure?”
“Quite sure, ma’am. Sergeant Shankar can back me up. And Officer Hosokawa, who was on front-desk duty. In fact, surely Hosokawa told you when you came in that a body had been found.”
“Hosokawa? He wasn’t on the desk when I came in. Someone else was. The Hungarian kid. What’s his name? Kadosa.”
“And Kadosa didn’t say anything?”
“Not a word. Guess he didn’t know.”
“But still, you checked your work board.”
“First thing I did when I came in. Must have been about twenty minutes after you say you rang. There were no messages then.” She went to her desk and summoned up her voicemail records. “Nope, nothing on here from before ten o’clock today.”
“I swear to you, I made that call.”
“And I believe you, Jack. It must have been a software glitch. Goddamn it.”
“Of course, I should have tried you again, to make sure you’d got the message. The thing is, I’d no idea Dargomyzhsky would get his footage on air so quickly.”
“Way I understand it, NN24 was the first channel Dargomyzhsky approached, and he accepted their first offer. Seems they paid him a fraction of what he could have got if he’d tried another couple of other channels and opened up a bidding war. That’s some consolation, I hope.”
“It is,” said Parry, nodding. “Some.” So, not such a good Russian capitalist, he thought. Or could it be that Dargomyzhsky had had an attack of conscience at the last minute? Maybe something Parry said to him had sunk in, so that he had deliberately taken far less for the footage than it could have earned him. Guilt and gilt – uneasy bedfellows.
“Anyway,” said Quesnel, “the upshot is that you did warn me about what had happened at the Debussy, even if the message somehow went astray. I’m really glad to know that, Jack. I shouldn’t have doubted you, but, well, I did, and it was a mistake. Sorry.”
Parry quickly deflected the apology, feeling unworthy of it. “We’re still left with an almighty gaffe, ma’am, for which I hold myself principally responsible. If there was some way I could make amends – perhaps by making a press statement of my own?”
“Very noble of you, but I don’t see what it would achieve.”
“Share out the blame a bit.”
“This is where the buck stops,” Quesnel said, tapping her chest.
“But we should at least let people know that I’m the one who briefed you on the Amadeus deaths, the one who didn’t foresee a second similar set of deaths coming.”
“Jack, why are you giving yourself such a hard time over this? I thought it was us Catholics who’re supposed to have a lock on the whole guilt-trip thing. Besides, you went out of your way in your report to say you weren’t a hundred per cent sure ab
out your findings.”
“I was hoping,” Parry said, doing his utmost not to sound accusatory, “that my lack of certainty would be infectious.”
Quesnel regarded him levelly, though not with any hostility, across her desk. “Jack, you know as well as I do that when you’re dealing with the press, even these days, you can’t give them uncertainties and likelihoods. Journalists are predators. They scent weakness. If they think you’re not being wholly honest with them, if they think you’re covering something up, they home in and attack. Give them a few plain, straightforward, solid-sounding facts, and they go home happy. That’s how you have to treat them, for everybody’s good, and OK, in this instance it didn’t work out, but that’s my problem and I’ll deal with it. What you have to do is get to the bottom of these goddamn deaths. Find out why we’ve had two sets of Foreign and Siren remains turn up within the space of a week and what we can do to stop it happening a third time. Because I tell you, I’m beginning to think that Ray’s right and this business is even worse than it looks.”
“You think someone’s doing this to them? A killer?”
“Don’t you?”
“I just can’t see why.”
“Neither can I. But maybe we’re dealing with someone who doesn’t need a reason, or at least a reason you or I or anyone sensible can understand. Someone, like those guys at Koh Farang, who simply wants Foreigners out of this city and doesn’t mind if humans get hurt in the process. I hope that isn’t so. Every shred of me wants it not to be so. But I’m beginning to think we have to consider it, at least.”
Parry slowly nodded.
“Of course, for the time being, we can’t admit that to anyone,” Quesnel went on. “There’ll be speculation, I’m sure, but as long as it remains speculation it can’t do much damage. Now, I’ve a second press conference coming up in about an hour’s time. Thought I should try and salvage something from this shambles. And actually, if you really do want to make amends, Jack, there’s some salvaging you can do, too.”
The Foreigners Page 16