The Happier Dead

by Ivo Stourton

  17:15 HOURS

  THURSDAY 21 NOVEMBER

  2035 (REAL WORLD)

  CHRIS RAJARAM HAD certainly called Hector from the Great Spa shortly after the murder. Hector bothered Oates, because the boy was an incompetent. The idea that the head of a rich corporation would choose someone like him for industrial espionage just didn’t sit right. If that was what you wanted there were men in London who could get in and out of a house without leaving so much as the ghost of their breath on a windowpane.

  The only advantage he could see in using Hector was that he was a male prostitute. A man in Prudence Egwu’s position would never report a crime in those circumstances. And that was the only possible explanation for employing Hector as the means of effecting the theft – the crime would go unreported. Seen in that light, the choice of Hector was strategically brilliant. Chris would at one stroke have secured his prize, and protected himself from the possibility of investigation.

  But why bother going to such lengths if you were going to stab the man to death? It would have been enough to accomplish the theft to know Prudence Egwu was staying in the Great Spa, and that his house would therefore be empty. In fact, if Chris was after the research papers which Mr Egwu had accumulated, the murder would have been a huge inconvenience – he must have known that with Prudence dead the police would eventually search his house, and might impound and examine any papers they found there. The fact he had contacted Hector directly was proof of a plot disrupted. He had not profited from the murder, he had been forced to accelerate his plans because of it, and the bungled late night visit from Hector was the result.

  Finally, there was the nature of the murder itself. Oates had watched those blows fall and retract on the screen of the Oracle. Oates had used a bayonet before; he knew how hard it was to get the blade back. The thing slipped in easy enough with a quick thrust the way it had in training, but the dummies had no ribcage, and the serrated blade of the knife got stuck. In the end he’d had to put his foot on the dead man’s shoulder. Whoever had killed Prudence Egwu had done that thirty times. That wasn’t murder for profit. That was the fury of madness.

  The offices of United Sciences were on the fifth floor of a building near the Old Bailey. His police pass got him into the underground carpark, where he changed between the doors of his car. The lift opened into a marble hall. He pushed open a set of glass swing doors etched with the company’s name and asked for Mr Rajaram at the front desk. He felt the receptionist’s manner tighten ever so slightly at the sight of the uniform, her spine straightening by a couple of degrees, her smile a few millimetres wider.

  She asked his name, and Oates gave his name and rank. She asked if he had an appointment, and he shook his head. Her fingers paused for a moment over the computer in front of her, hovering in the air whilst she took in the uniform, the stance, the attitude which Oates had traipsed in from his long day of murders and gunfights. She excused herself for a moment, and conversed with someone on the other end of a telephone in a voice too low to catch. When she came back, she showed him to a seat, and told him someone would be down in a minute to collect him, and would he like tea or coffee?

  Oates sat on the soft leather sofa in front of a vase filled with orchids. Beside him there were three men in suits with briefcases. They had been talking tactics when he came over, but his presence extinguished their enthusiasm.

  On the wall of the reception room was a painting exactly like the one he had seen in Prudence Egwu’s townhouse. He cast about for something to distract him whilst he waited. There was a pile of broadsheet newspapers on the table in front of him, and he recognised the pink pages of the Financial Times. He picked it up, and immediately threw it back down. He crossed his legs, but the low seat was uncomfortable, and he slid forward on the shiny leather. Two of the businessmen beside him were studiously ignoring this display, and pretending to study laminated folders they had brought with them, but the third was watching Oates, his cheeks reddening in the silence.

  “Anyway,” he began, speaking louder than he had been before Oates’s approach, “I think we should be pushing for full reliance. On the disclosure report.”

  His companions started up from their folders. One of them muttered, “possibly, possibly,” and smiled in a placatory way before returning to the page. The speaker, however, was not so easily perturbed.

  “It’s, what, a couple of million more in terms of exposure. And you’re not telling me they don’t have the insurance. If it’s a professional liability issue, they shouldn’t even be at the table. They shouldn’t even be in the room!”

  “Well, we’ll find out when we see them.”

  “Yes, but I think we have to be up front that this is a show-stopper. We won’t accept anything less…”

  Oates plucked up the Financial Times from where he had thrown it, and spread it open on the table in front of him. He removed his gun from its holster, and checked the barrel, dirtied with the recent discharge. He disassembled the firing mechanism, laying out the pieces one after another on the spread newspaper. Each one made a muffled click on the glass beneath the paper as he set it down. He removed the small oilcloth he kept in a pouch by the solid gun housing, and laced it through the bore. He lifted it to his eye, and winked at the painting through the clean hole. The man continued to talk, but his eyes were watching the slow assemblage of lethal components spreading oil over the pages of the FT.

  Taking the gun apart helped Oates to calm his mind. He was so engrossed in the coming together of the gleaming gun, that he was startled to find the woman from the desk standing over him along with a slightly older lady in a skirt and blouse. The lawyers were gone. With a smile and a sweep of her hand, the receptionist passed him into the care of her elder. The latter introduced herself as Mr Rajaram’s personal assistant, and invited him to accompany her.

  MR RAJARAM WAS concluding a meeting elsewhere in the building, and Oates had a few moments alone to take in his office. The family photographs faced outwards on the surface of the desk like a defensive pallisade, a protection against any questioning of this man’s practice or priorities. The wife was pretty, the children smiling, the frames plain and heavy silver. Mrs Rajaram was white, and a couple of inches taller than her husband, with the distant beauty of a fashion model. She had also undergone the Treatment, so that in the family portrait the couple looked like the older siblings of their own children.

  The flat monitor of the computer was turned away from him, but Oates watched the screensaver photographs scrolling past in the reflection of the window behind the desk. One of them was taken in the interior of an epic church, the kind so big that the altar spreads tv screens like great wings on either side, filled with a twinned image of the pastor sweating in close-up. Another photograph showed Chris standing outside a hut on a dusty plain, his arms around two black men in khaki shirts. The black men were smiling. The images hung outside in the dark of the London evening. On the wall above the desk was a wooden cross. Oates had been waiting perhaps ten minutes when the smoked glass door behind him opened, and Chris Rajaram himself surfed in on a wave of business.

  “Don’t get up, don’t get up! I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Inspector.”

  “No problem. I was just admiring your office.”

  “It’s a lovely view, isn’t it? We’re very lucky.”

  “That’s something you don’t see much anymore,” he said, indicating the cross.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. The churches are heaving, not just at cult but the Catholics, even dear old C of E.”

  “Cult?”

  “The Church of the Present Resurrection. We like to call it cult, because everyone else does,” he laughed good-naturedly, and threw himself down into his chair with his arms behind his head.

  “Isn’t that the group that believes that the Treatment comes from Jesus?”

  “No, unfortunately not! My job would be a great deal easier if Jesus held the patents for the Treatment. The Treatment comes from Nottingham Bios
ciences, sadly. But we believe in the human face of God. God was made man, and there’s no reason that the beginnings of the afterlife should not also come through man. The Treatment is the beginning of His kingdom on earth, the first of the elect. The press has the tendency to pick up on the more fantastic elements of our faith. Personally I think it’s a lot less controversial than, say, cannibalism in the Catholic mass.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “If you’re interested you should come along some time. We’re open to all, not just the new-young. The Treatment is a message to us to try and build His paradise here on earth. Get a head start on the New Jerusalem. It’s Him saying, I’ll be here soon, I’m on my way, get out the bunting and the paper cups!”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Small things. Some charity work, some trips to schools. Inviting promising young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to come and work here, and other companies like it in the City. I’m sure you make your own contribution to building a better London.”

  “I wanted to ask you a few more questions about what you heard on the night of the murder.”

  “Oh yes?”

  Oates flipped his notepad, and waited with pen poised.

  “I did try to tell your colleague everything.”

  “I know that, Mr Rajaram.”

  “Chris, please. I’m happy to be a witness you know. In court or anything. Diary permitting, obviously.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, do you just want me to tell you again, or what?”

  “Tell me again.”

  “Okay. As I told your colleague, I went to dinner in halls, and I came back to my room around 9:30.”

  “9:30pm Spa time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that your usual routine?”

  “I wouldn’t say I had a usual routine. I’d only arrived at St Margaret’s about a week before.”

  “Was it your first time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were in the other centre for the first fortnight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you bring Mrs Rajaram with you?”

  “No.”

  “Why? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Not at all. She wanted to spend some time with the children.”

  “So you came back to your room alone?”

  “All alone.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Read a book.”

  “What book?”

  “Uh… Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Does it matter?”

  “For homework?”

  “No.”

  “For pleasure?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what time did you call Hector?”

  “I’m sorry, who is Hector?”

  “Hector is the male prostitute you paid to steal documents from Prudence Egwu’s house shortly after he was found murdered.”

  Chris bounced on his chair. Oates folded his notebook shut.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Mr Rajaram. Chris. I don’t think you killed Prudence Egwu. I think that you might know why someone would want him dead. I think that the touchcard records will show you exiting St Margaret’s to make a phonecall very shortly after the discovery of Prudence Egwu’s body. I think that you have probably been very careful in your communications with Hector to date, doing everything in conversation via an intermediary with nothing written down or recorded, but this one time you will have been aware of the opportunity and the need to move fast, and I would guess that overcame your natural caution. I’ve got Hector’s phone in my pocket with the call log. As I said, there’s a lot of guesses in there. If they’re wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about. But if they’re right then the sooner you tell me the whole story, the sooner I can be out of your office.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say anything further without a lawyer.”

  “You can do that. I can’t formally interview you without your lawyer if you want one. But what I can do is arrest you. And I can do it now, and I can call up a few other officers in uniform from downstairs, just to make sure we all get safely to the patrol car.”

  Oates sat back, and allowed the image of Mr Rajaram being escorted in handcuffs past the smart receptionists and the kind of lawyers who won’t settle for anything less than full reliance to sink in.

  “It’s amazing how hot the press are on this Avalon murder. Still, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? I think they’d be very interested to hear that a director of a rival company was helping us with our inquiries.”

  Chris opened his mouth to speak, a look of outrage gathering momentum in his brows. Oates knew exactly what was coming. There was a class of British men and women to whom the police force was a dog chained in the yard, trained to bark at strangers only. They were the same people who were always amazed when they were arrested for being caught with cocaine, who were offended when they got towed for parking on double yellows. Question whether they thought the law should apply to everyone the same, and they would look at you like an idiot for asking. Apply the law to them, and they were amazed.

  Then Chris closed his mouth again, and the rage vanished. He smiled at Oates, and stood up. There was a bowl of fruit on the desk, and he picked from it three oranges. He stayed standing behind his desk, and began to juggle them.

  “Do you know where I learned to do this? On a company bonding weekend Human Resources sent me on. Circus skills. Me and the rest of the board, and some of the senior execs. Total waste of money, but now I know how to juggle.”

  “I’m not interested in the theft of some documents, Mr Rajaram.”

  “Chris.”

  “You’re not even under caution. I’m interested in who killed Prudence Egwu. Just tell me what you know and I’ll be gone.”

  “Alright. I don’t know who killed him. And I don’t know why anyone would want him dead. Look, we’ve had Hector working for us for some time, but I only saw Prudence Egwu at St Margaret’s by accident. When I saw him I arranged for one of my employees to contact Hector and to tell him to go ahead, that the house would be empty for at least a month. And it would have been fine, only I came back from afternoon classes to find that someone had killed poor Prudence, and there were police all over the spa. I knew they would search his house eventually, and would take things as evidence. There might never be another chance to get the data. So I called up Hector myself, and told him it had to be now. The rest of it, everything I put in my statement, it’s all true. I saw that guy going into his room at about 3am, and I heard a scuffle. I have trouble sleeping you see–”

  “We understand that Prudence Egwu was reconstructing his brother’s research.”

  Chris became guarded once again. He was waiting to discover how much Oates knew.

  “Specifically, his research into the Tithonus Effect.”

  “You’re aware of it? Well, it’s bad. And it’s becoming more pronounced. The human soul has its own trajectory you see, independent from the body, and independent from the faculties of intellect. The Treatment can restore and preserve your brain function at the level of a healthy twenty-year-old, but it can’t re-invigorate the soul. When you cease to be excited by and take pleasure in life, you begin to have to do more extreme things to achieve stimulation. Also your capacity for empathy diminishes. We have seen some extremely bad cases here from clients who have received the Treatment from Nottingham, some of them bordering on psychopathy. When you consider the positions of power generally occupied by the new-young, you can see the danger.”

  “And Capability was working on a cure?”

  “Capability Egwu suffered from this very badly. As a key developer of the Treatment he was one of the first to experience it, and also consequently one of the oldest men alive. I knew him very well, Inspector. He was a member of our church. He was an extremely active philanthropist, and he contributed a great deal to the lives of ordinary Londoners. But he also suffered from the depression which often seems the dark companion of gen
ius. The Tithonus Effect exacerbated that depression and made him quite unstable. There were others in the church closer to Capability than I was, and I came to understand from them that Capability was working on a cure for the Tithonus Effect. From what we can tell he was very close to the completion of his research when he disappeared.”

  “And you wanted that research for yourself?”

  “Not for myself, exactly.”

  “But you paid Hector to steal it.”

  “We became aware that Prudence was making progress into his brother’s disappearance. We made him a very fair offer for anything he could recover of Capability’s work, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “And you don’t like hearing no. Hector says he sent you a sample of what he stole from Prudence Egwu. A couple of pages from one of the files.”

  “That is correct.”

  “What was in them?”

  “It was a joke. A prank of some sort.”

  “So tell me the joke.”

  “It was a series of articles about something called Sudden Accent Syndrome. When people get a bump on the head, and wake up speaking with an Australian accent. Or they get hit by a car and then they only speak French, or German or something.”

  “Can I see these articles?”

  By way of answer, Chris rose from his desk and walked over to a large metallic chest of drawers in the corner of the room. His quick fingers danced the code, and he pulled out a couple of pieces of paper.

  “You thought it was a joke, but you didn’t throw them away.”

  Chris shrugged. He scooped a stapler off the corner of his desk with a flourish, and neatly clicked the corner of the pages together, before setting them on the desk in front of Oates. His movements still held a residue of the Great Spa, a kind of physical exuberance which was oddly incongruous with his suit and the office setting.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Oates asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Earlier today I killed a boy. He had a gun and I shot him. The girl he was with knew I’d been to see Hector. Do you know anything about that?”