by Eric Brown
She almost laughed, then. “You understand, Mr Vaughan. I had hoped you would. You see... part of me wanted to know, but another part... I don’t want to hate my husband, Mr Vaughan. I want to remember all our good times together.”
“You don’t mind if I take a look at the diary?”
“Of course not. I’ll show you to his study.” She led him from the room, across a gallery and into a study the mirror image of her own. The library appeared identical, as did the selection of holo-cubes on display.
A big timber desk sat beside the viewscreen.
Hermione Kormier stood at the door, as if reluctant to trespass on the territory of her murdered husband. She indicated the desk. “In the top drawer on the right. It’s unlocked. I’ll be in my study.”
He watched her withdraw, then crossed to the desk and sat down in an old-fashioned timber chair, pulling open the drawer and lifting out a thick, old-fashioned ledger.
It was marked with the year’s date. He turned the pages, admiring the dead man’s meticulous script. He scanned a few entries from earlier in the year, before Kormier’s posting to Mallory.
It was not what he was expecting, abstruse musings from a world-leading xenozoologist, but the endearing day-to-day observations and jottings of a man very much in love with his wife. Indeed, Kormier himself was less the subject of his entries than was Hermione.
17th January. Dined with Hermione after writing. Discussed the parallax theory I’ve been working on. H is so damned astute. It’s been twenty years, and Christ I love the woman more and more every day...
Vaughan stopped reading, his throat constricted.
He flipped a sheaf of pages, arriving at more recent entries.
They were mere one-liners, and often cryptic. A week before his death: Considering autumn, vague thoughts of home.
Two days after that: Sunsets on Mallory... will I ever see them again?
He turned back to the dates that Kormier was on Mallory. There were entries for the first couple of weeks, then nothing for weeks. He read all the entries on Mallory, mainly technical reports he had no hope of understanding, with no hint of anything untoward.
The very last entry made on the colony world read: Begin field trip tomorrow with Travers. Looking into his pachyderm hypothesis. Should be fascinating.
Then nothing until two months later, two weeks ago, and his abstract jottings about Mallory and sunsets. There were three more entries made over the last fortnight. The first, ten days ago, reported: Travers called yesterday. See him today.
Three days later: T—meet him tonight.
Vaughan sat back. Travers. He had to find Travers. Could it be that Travers was the man he had arranged to meet at the amusement park?
There was no entry for the day after his meetings with Travers, however.
He closed the diary and examined the desk. Amid papers and com-pins, he noticed a metallic pass-card. He picked it up, smiling. The card showed a pix of Kormier, beneath the legend: Scheering-Lassiter Authorised Staff.
He slipped it into his pocket. Kapinsky would ball him out when he produced this little ace.
He lodged the diary under his arm and left the study, pausing on the gallery outside Hermione’s room.
He hesitated, tempted to spare himself the torture of scanning the woman.
Before he could give in, he tapped in the access code and braced himself. He reached out for the wall, held on, as the full force of her emotions assailed him.
It was as if she were consumed by an interior whirlwind of grief, a vast swirling twister of guilt and regret and the raw emotion of knowing that her husband was dead, that she would never again share her life with him.
And caught in the typhoon, like debris sucked up and swirled, were fleeting verbalised thoughts: >>> Miss him! The bastard! I love him... (His last seconds... Pain? Suffering... I should have been with him!)
On another level, in the calm dead centre of the storm, Vaughan caught references to himself.
>>> When will the ingratiating bastard leave me alone? Police fascist! Happy with his little Thai slut. (Anger, jealousy...)
Deeper, he probed rooted memories of her life with Robert Kormier, was hit by images of them in bed, ecstatic in sexual abandon, and then arguing fiercely, hurling abuse.
He quickly killed his implant. What she had told him had been the truth. He had no desire to pry further.
He stepped into her study, telling himself that her mental anger at him was justifiable. He smiled and held out Robert Kormier’s diary.
She stood, facing him, her tanned, lined face innocent of the emotions that swirled deep within her psyche.
He wanted to hug her, tell her that her husband loved her. Instead, he passed her the diary and said: “Read it. You have nothing to fear.”
Her face, fleetingly, showed hope.
He said, “Your husband was meeting a fellow scientist called Travers. It’s important that I trace him.”
“Sam Travers? He was a colleague of Robert’s. He lives on the southside, Lohng Kla, Level One. Seventeen Khaosan Road.”
“Were they friends?”
“They’d known each other since university. But Sam was away so much of the time that Robert hardly saw him. They made sure they met at least once a year, though.”
“Did Travers work for Scheering-Lassiter?”
“No, he was employed by the Station University.”
“But Travers was working on Mallory earlier this year?”
“That’s right. He was on research leave from his department.”
“Did you know him?”
She shook her head. “I met him once or twice. He wasn’t my type. Overambitious, overconfident. Full of himself. But he and Robert got on.”
He hesitated, then said, “Your husband and Travers never had reason to disagree on anything, professional arguments?”
“Absolutely not. They shared many of the same views and ideals. They worked together on many conservation schemes.”
Vaughan made to leave. “I’m sorry for intruding. I want to find who did this. I hope you understand?”
Wordlessly, she nodded. She hesitated, then said, “I thought you were going to read me, Mr Vaughan?”
He looked at her, then shook his head. “That won’t be necessary,” he lied. “I’ll show myself out.”
He hurried down the helical staircase and stepped out into the merciless afternoon sunlight.
* * * *
SIX
TRAVERS
Lohng Kla was a prosperous district on the south side of the Station, away from the noise and bustle of the spaceport to the north-west. Parks and gardens alternated with neat suburbs, the residences of university workers and affluent students.
Khaosan Road paralleled the edge of the station, and a terrace of black polycarbon dwellings, like beetles on a starting line, overlooked the sea.
Vaughan found number seventeen, set back in a lawned garden. It was a surprisingly small dwelling for the area, just one storey high. He was about to push the doorbell when he noticed that the door was open an inch. He pushed it further open and called out, “Hello? Travers?”
There was no reply. Cautiously he stepped into a narrow hallway, relieved now that Kapinsky had insisted on his carrying a weapon.
He stopped, activated his implant and scanned.
Mind-noise rushed him from every direction. There were people in the houses to either side, and on the level below. He caught stray strands of verbalised thought and heightened emotion.
Now he saw why the building appeared small from the street: a staircase descended through the deck. He followed the stairs, scanning as he went. It was impossible to tell whether the mind-noise below emanated from this dwelling or others beyond. He deactivated his implant as he arrived at the foot of the stairs, which opened out onto a gallery overlooking a lounge with a vast viewscreen giving onto the ocean.
He paused at the edge of the gallery, looking down. He fingered the bulk of the pistol beneat
h his jacket. Despite what Hermione Kormier thought, he knew enough not to dismiss the possibility that Travers had killed Kormier. They had met a couple of times over the past two weeks, and had been together on a field trip on Mallory. Vaughan was willing to gamble that, if Travers was not directly responsible for Kormier’s death, then he had information that might help the investigation.
He thought about calling out again, but remained silent. He slipped his hand beneath the flap of his jacket and closed his fingers around the butt of the pistol, pacing along the length of the gallery and taking another flight of steps down into the vast lounge. The viewscreen here was opaqued, giving the long room the dim, still atmosphere of an aquarium.
He looked around, his heartbeat loud. The place was still silent. He accessed his implant again. Three people were dining to his left, perhaps thirty metres away in the neighbouring apartment. None of them was Sam Travers. A sea of mind-noise surged below him, from Level Three. This apartment seemed to be empty.
So was this neighbourhood so safe that Travers left his front door open when he went out?
Uneasy, Vaughan moved from the lounge. He checked the adjacent bedroom and bathroom but found nothing, then re-crossed the lounge to another room.
Sunlight falling through the un-opaqued viewscreen to his left dazzled him for a second, before his eyes adjusted and he made out what was obviously a study. Books lined three walls, and overspill piles tottered on the carpet, alternating with holo-cubes showing various specimens of alien fauna.
He stopped on the threshold, staring at the messy remains that filled the chair before the desk. He glanced at the coagulated blood that covered the carpet. Evidently Travers had been dead for hours.
He moved back into the lounge and got through Kapinsky’s answering service, gave Travers’s address and told her to get here fast. Then he called K.J. Kulpa and reported a second slaying.
He knew he had to go back into the study, but something stopped him. He lifted his handset again, and before he realised what he was doing he had tapped out Sukara’s code.
Her smiling face filled the screen, dazzling him with relief. “Su, you don’t know how good it is to see you.”
“Jeff, you okay? You look white as a ghost!”
He smiled. “I’m fine. I thought I’d call, see how you are.”
“Oh, I’m okay. Tired. You know. Oh—she just kicked!” She laughed, and her delight filled Vaughan with joy. “It’s so strange, Jeff, having someone inside you.”
“What have you got planned for this afternoon?”
She gave a guilty smile. “I’m meeting Lara for coffee. What have you been doing?”
“I’ll tell you all about it tonight,” he said. “I love you, Su.”
“Love you, too,” she echoed. He cut the connection and stood in silence, his heartbeat loud, wanting to be far away from this place, drinking coffee at some quiet, shaded café in the Park.
He moved to the study door and leaned against the woodwork. The killer must have stood right here, he judged, said something to attract Travers’s attention: Travers swivels in his seat, and the killer fires his laser, sweeping it in his or her signature loop, causing maximum injury with minimum effort.
The result was that Travers’s head and arms lay on the carpet. His torso sat on the charred swivel chair, feet planted incongruously on the floor.
Vaughan returned to the lounge. He de-opaqued the viewscreen and sat in the sunlight, dictating into his handset a report of that morning’s interview with Hermione Kormier and the latest discovery.
Kapinsky arrived ten minutes later, closely followed by Kulpa and the SoC team.
He gave Kulpa the pin detailing his investigations, as protocol dictated, and waited until Kapinsky emerged from the study. She crossed the lounge as if breezing down a fashion catwalk and sprawled in a deep armchair across from him, arms and legs spread.
He told her about his meeting with Hermione Kormier.
She watched him, her expression blank.
“You’ve been busy for a new boy,” she said when he’d finished. “Any thoughts?”
He stared at her. He could live with his new job, the intrusive mind-reading and butchered bodies, but it was hard to take the fact that he was employed by someone he didn’t particularly like.
“Where to begin?” he said. “The common link is Mallory, of course. They came across something there, saw something, heard something... I don’t know. Kormier’s wife said he was a different person when he got back, a month ago. He had a couple of meetings with Travers, and they both end up dead.”
Kulpa emerged from the study and tossed Kapinsky a pin. “That’s all the information we’ve collated from this one. If you need anything more, shout.”
While the SoC team packed up, and the corpse team moved in, Kapinsky inserted the pin into her handset. She spoke into her ‘set, sounding bored.
“Estimated time of death?”
A neutral female voice replied, “Two a.m., plus or minus ten minutes.”
Vaughan said, “Couple of hours after the killer got Kormier.”
Kapinsky grunted, “All in a night’s work.” To her handset she said, “Means of death?”
“Instantaneous laser laceration of carotid artery.”
“Weapon used?”
“Kulatov MkII blaser, set at maximum burn.”
“And estimated range of laser?”
“Between two and three metres.”
“Does the victim have dependants, next of kin?”
“Victim’s marital status: single, no known relations.”
Kapinsky killed her ‘set and looked across at Vaughan. “Let’s presume, for the time being, that we’re dealing with one killer here, okay?”
“Looks that way.”
“So where were we?”
Vaughan said, “Mallory. The connection. Kormier and Travers found something there. You know anything about the planet?”
“Christ, Vaughan, there’re so many colony worlds out there I’ve lost count. I’m an investigator, not an encyclopaedia.”
“It was simply a question,” he said, staring at her.
She shrugged. “I know fuck all about the place.” She indicated her handset. “But I’ll access the Station’s database.”
He nearly congratulated her, but held his tongue.
She tapped her handset’s keypad and said, “Colony planet. Mallory. Information by specific question.”
Vaughan glanced across the lounge. The corpse team was manhandling a white body bag through the door and up the narrow stairs, their task not made easy by the fact that the corpse was in four pieces. He looked away.
Seconds later a transistorised male voice issued from Kapinsky’s handset. “Connection established. Proceed.”
She said, “Political situation, population, indigenous population?”
Ten minutes later they had a brief outline of the colony world of Mallory, Eta Ophiuchi. It was a class II Earth-norm world, land-sea ratio seventy-thirty, equable climate approximating to Earth sub-tropical, approximately the size of Luna. It was owned by the Scheering-Lassiter organisation, who governed by a democratically elected committee of twelve. The planet had no sentient native life forms, but a vast ecology ranging from bacteria up to arboreal primates. Its population was just 6.3 million, its main industries uranium and diamond mining and agriculture.
Vaughan said, “We really need to talk to someone at Scheering-Lassiter.”
“So okay,” Kapinsky said, “except the Scheering-Lassiter people aren’t playing ball.”
“What did they say?”
“I requested a meeting with some official in charge of colonial affairs. A stone-faced bitch said no-can-do. She told me they’re detailing their own in-house team of investigators to look into the killing. Which, Vaughan, is entirely within their rights. We’re private investigators—we’ve no jurisdiction. Can’t make the bastards see us.”
Vaughan almost mentioned the pass-card he’d palmed from Ko
rmier’s study, but something stopped him from showing his hand. Chances were if he told her about it, she’d commandeer the card and waltz into the Scheering-Lassiter headquarters all guns blazing.
He’d go there himself; make discreet enquiries.
He said, “I have contacts at the Station. I’ll see what I can do, okay?”
“You get in there, you’re a better man than me, Vaughan.”
She stood up and moved to the viewscreen, leaned against it and said to him, “I went over to the police HQ, accessed the files. I thought I’d check Kormier’s death against any others over the past year or so.”