by Eric Brown
“I was passing. What happened?”
He’d got to know Lincoln over the course of a few tea-time sessions at the Dog and Gun a year ago, both men coming off duty at the same time and needing the refreshment and therapy of good beer and conversation.
Lincoln was a big, silver-haired man in his sixties, and unfailingly cheerful. He wore tweeds, which gave him a look of innate conservatism belied by his liberal nature. His bonhomie had pulled Standish from the doldrums on more than one occasion.
Lincoln finished his coffee. “Bloody strange, Doug. I was at the Station, on the vid-link with Sarah Roberts, a colleague. She was at home.” He pointed to the converted farmhouse. “We were going over a few details about a couple of returnees when she said she’d be back in a second—there was someone at the door. She disappeared from sight and came back a little later. She was talking to someone, obviously someone she knew. She was turning to the screen to address me when there was a loud… I don’t quite know how to describe it. A crack. A report.”
“A gunshot?”
Lincoln nodded. “Anyway, she cried out and fell away from the screen. I ran to the control room and sure enough… We were being signalled by her implant. She was dead. Look.”
Lincoln reached out and touched the controls of a screen embedded in the dashboard. An image flickered into life, and Standish made out the shot of a well-furnished front room, with a woman’s body sprawled across the floor, a bloody wound in her upper chest.
Absently, Lincoln fingered the implant at his temple. “I contacted you people and drove straight over.”
“Did you pass any other vehicles on the way here?”
Lincoln shook his head. “No. And I was on the lookout, of course. The strangest thing is… Well, come and see for yourself.”
Lincoln climbed from the cab and Standish joined him. They moved towards the wrought-iron gate that barred their way. It was locked.
“Look,” Lincoln said. He indicated the driveway and lawns of the farmhouse. A thick covering of snow gave the scene the aspect of a traditional Christmas card.
Standish could see no tracks or footprints.
“Follow me.” Lincoln walked along the side of the wall that encircled the property. Standish followed, wading through the foot of snow that covered the springy heather. They climbed a small rise and halted, looking down on the farmhouse from the elevated vantage point.
Lincoln pointed to the rear of the building. “Same again,” he said, looking at Standish.
“There’s not a single damned footprint to be seen,” Standish said.
“Nothing. No footprints, tyre-marks, tracks of any kind. The snow stopped falling around midday, so there’s no way a new fall could have covered any tracks. Anyway, the killer came to the house forty-five minutes ago.”
“But how? If he didn’t leave tracks…” Standish examined the ground, searching for the smallest imprint. He looked at Lincoln. “There is one explanation, of course.”
“There is?”
“The killer was always in the house, concealed somewhere. He came before the snow fell and hid himself. Then he emerged, crept through the house to the door, stepped outside and knocked.”
“But that’d mean…”
Standish nodded. “If I’m right, then he’s still in there.”
“What do you think?” Lincoln asked. “Should we go in?”
In the old days, before the Kéthani, he would not have risked it. Now, with death no longer the threat it used to be, he didn’t think twice.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They returned to the front gate and climbed over. Standish led the way, high-stepping through the deep snow.
He had the sudden feeling of being involved in one of those Golden Age whodunits he’d devoured as a teenager, stories of ingenious murders carried out with devious cunning and improbable devices.
The front door was unlocked. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, Standish carefully turned the handle and pushed open the door. He led the way to the lounge.
Sarah Roberts lay on her back before the flickering vid-screen. The earlier image of her, Standish thought, had done nothing to convey her beauty. She was slim and blonde, her face ethereally beautiful. Like an angel, he thought.
They moved into the big, terracotta-tiled kitchen and checked the room thoroughly. They found the entrance to a small cellar and descended cautiously. The cellar was empty. Next they returned to the kitchen and moved into the adjacent dining room, but again found nothing.
“Upstairs?” Lincoln said.
Standish nodded. He led the way, climbing the wide staircase in silence. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, two bare and unoccupied, the third furnished with a single bed. They went through them from top to bottom. He was aware of the steady pounding of his heart as Standish pulled aside curtains and opened wardrobes. Last of all they checked the converted attic, spartanly furnished like the rest of the bedrooms, and just as free of lurking gunmen.
“Clean as a whistle,” Lincoln said as they made their way downstairs.
“I wish we’d found the killer,” Standish muttered. “I don’t like the alternative.” What was the alternative, he wondered? An eerie, impossible murder in a house surrounded by snow…
They entered the lounge. Lincoln knelt beside the body, reached out, and touched the woman’s implant.
Years ago, before the Kéthani, Standish had seen any number of bodies during the course of a working week, and he had never really become accustomed, or desensitised, to the fact that these once living people had been robbed of existence.
Now, when he did occasionally come across a corpse in the line of duty, he was immediately struck by the same feeling of futile waste and tragedy—only to be brought up short with the realisation that now, thanks to the Kéthani, the dead would be granted new life.
Lincoln looked up at him, his expression stricken. “Christ, Doug. This isn’t right.”
Standish felt his stomach turn. “What?”
Lincoln slumped back against the wall. Standish could see that he was sweating. “Her implant’s dead.”
“But I thought you said… you received the signal at the Station, right?”
Lincoln nodded. “It was the initial signal indicating that the subject had died.”
“So it should still be working?”
“Of course. It should be emitting a constant pulse.” He shook his head. “Look, this has never happened before. It’s unknown. These things just don’t pack up. They’re Kéthani technology.”
“Maybe it was one of those false implants? Don’t people with objections to the Kéthani sometimes have them?”
Lincoln waved. “Sarah worked for the Kéthani, Doug. And anyway, it was working. I saw the signal myself. Now the damned thing’s dead.”
Standish stared down at the woman, a wave of nausea overcoming him. He was struck once more by her attenuated Nordic beauty, and he was sickened by the thought that she would never live again. Amanda would have called him a sexist bastard: as if the tragedy were any the greater for the woman being beautiful.
“Can’t something be done?”
Lincoln lifted his shoulders in a hopeless shrug. “I don’t honestly know. The device needs to be active in the minutes immediately after the subject’s death, in order to begin the resurrection process. Maybe the techs at the Station might be able to do something. Like I said, this has never happened before.”
The room was hot, suffocatingly so. Standish moved to a window at the back of the room and was about to open it when he saw something through the glass.
He stepped from the lounge and into the kitchen. The back door was open a few inches. He crossed to it and, with his handkerchief, eased it open a little further and peered out.
The snow on the path directly outside the door had been melted in a circle perhaps a couple of metres across, revealing a stone-flagged path and a margin of lawn. The snow began again immediately beyond the melt, but there was no si
gn of footprints or any other tracks.
He returned to the lounge. Lincoln was on his mobile, evidently talking to someone at the Onward Station. “And there’s nothing at your end, either? Okay. Look, get a tech down here, fast.”
Standish crossed the room and stood before the big picture window, staring out at the darkening land with his back to the corpse. He really had no wish to look upon the remains of Sarah Roberts. Her reflection, in the glass, struck him as unbearably poignant, even more angelic as it seemed to float, ghost-like and evanescent, above the floor.
Lincoln joined him. “They’re sending someone down to look at the implant.”
Standish nodded. “The scene-of-crime team should be here any minute.” He glanced at the ferryman. “You didn’t hear her visitor’s voice when she returned from answering the door?”
“Nothing. I was aware that there was someone in the room by Sarah’s attitude. She seemed eager to end the call. But I didn’t see or hear anyone else.”
“Have you any idea which door she answered, front or back?”
Lincoln turned and looked at the vid-screen. “Let’s see, she was facing the screen, and she moved off to the left—so she must have answered the back door.”
That would fit with the door being ajar—but what of the melted patch?
“What kind of person was she? Popular? Boyfriend, husband?”
Lincoln shrugged. “I didn’t really know her. Station gossip was that she was a bit of a cold fish. Remote. Kept herself to herself. Didn’t make friends. She wasn’t married, and as far as I know she didn’t have a partner.”
“What was her job at the Station?”
“Well, she was designated a liaison officer, but to be honest I don’t exactly know what that entailed. I kept her up to date with the dead I delivered and the returnees, but I don’t know what she did with the information. She worked with Masters, the Station Director. He’d know more than me.”
“How long had she been at the Station?”
“Two or three months. But before that she’d worked at others up and down the country, so I heard.”
Standish nodded. “I’m just going to take another look around. I’ll be down when the scene-of-crime people turn up.”
He left the lounge and climbed the stairs again. He stood in the doorway of the only furnished bedroom and took in the bed—a single bed, which struck him as odd—and the bedside table with nothing upon it.
He moved to the bathroom and scanned the contents: a big shower stall, a Jacuzzi in the corner, plush white carpet… He stared around the room, trying to fathom precisely why he had the subtle feeling that something was not quite right. It was more a vague sensation than anything definite.
He heard the muffled groan of a labouring engine and rejoined Lincoln in the lounge.
Two minutes later Kendrick, the scene-of-crime team chief, appeared at the door with three other officers, and Standish and Lincoln went over their findings.
The tech from the Station turned up shortly after that and knelt over the corpse, examining the woman’s implant with the aid of a case full of equipment, scanners and a softscreen, and other implements Standish didn’t recognise.
Kendrick drew Standish to one side. “They’re bringing in a chap from Manchester, inspector. I know technically this is your territory, but the commissioner’s decided he wants the big boys in.”
Standish opened his mouth to complain, then thought better of it. Kendrick was merely the messenger; it would achieve nothing to vent his frustration on the scene-of-crime chief.
Twenty minutes later Lincoln clapped him on the shoulder. “Heading past the Dog and Gun? Fancy a quick one?”
“You’re a mind-reader, Richard. Lead the way.”
They retreated with their pints of Old Peculier to the table beside the fire. The barroom of the Dog and Gun was empty but for themselves and half a dozen youngsters at the far end of the bar. The kids wore the latest silvered fashions—uncomfortably dazzling to the eye—and talked too loudly amongst themselves. As if we really want to hear their inane views of life in the twenty-first century, Standish thought.
“What is it, Doug?” Lincoln asked, reducing the measure of his pint by half in one appreciative mouthful.
“What’s happened to society over the past ten years, Richard?”
Lincoln smiled. “You mean since the coming of the Kéthani? Don’t you think things have got better?”
Standish shrugged. “I suppose so, yes.” How could he express his dissatisfaction without sounding sorry for himself? “But… Okay, so we don’t die. We don’t have that fear. But what about the quality of the life we have now?”
Lincoln laughed. “You’ve been reading Cockburn, right?”
“Never heard of him.”
“A Cambridge philosopher who claims that humankind has lost some innate spark since the arrival of the Kéthani.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Standish said. He took a long swallow of rich, creamy ale. “It’s just that… perhaps it’s me. I lived so long with the certainties of the old way of life. I knew where I belonged. I had a job that I liked and thought useful…”
At the far end of the bar, one of the kids—a girl, Standish saw—threw her lager in the face of a friend, who didn’t seem to mind. They laughed uproariously and barged their way from the pub. Seconds later he saw them mount their motorcycles and roar off, yelling, into the night.
“All the old values have gone,” he said.
“The world’s changing,” Lincoln said. “Now that we no longer fear death, we’re liberated.”
Standish smiled and shook his head. “Liberated from what—what freedom have we found? The freedom to live shallow, superficial lives? Perhaps it’s my fault,” he went on. “Perhaps I was an old fart before the aliens came, and now I’m too set in my ways to change.” That was a glib analysis, he thought, but it hinted at some deeper, psychological truth.
Lincoln was watching him. “Don’t you think about the future, and feel grateful for what we’ve got?”
Standish considered this. “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m struck by the greater uncertainty of things. Before we had the certainty of death— oblivion, if you had no faith. Now we come back to life and go among the stars… and that seems almost as terrifying.”
Lincoln contemplated his empty glass for a second or two, then said, “Another pint?”
“You’ve twisted my arm.”
Lincoln returned, sat down, and regarded Standish in silence for a while. “How’s things with Amanda?” The question was asked with the casual precision of a psychiatrist getting to the heart of his patient’s problem.
Standish shrugged. “About the same. It’s been bad for a year or so now.” Longer, if he were to be honest with himself. It was just that he’d begun to notice it over the course of the past year.
“Have you considered counselling?”
“Thought about it,” he said. Which was a lie. Their relationship was too far gone to bother trying to save. Amanda felt nothing for him any more, and had said as much.
He shrugged and said, “There’s really not much to say about it, Richard. It’s as good as over.” He buried his head in his drink and willed the ferryman to change the subject.
It was over, he knew, but something deep within him, that innate conservatism again, that fear of change, was loath to be the one to admit as much. It was as if he lived in hope that things might change between them, become miraculously better.
But in lieu of improvement, he held onto what he had got for fear of finding himself with nothing at all.
Lincoln said, “Doug, perhaps you’d feel better about life in general if you could sort things out with Amanda, one way or another.”
Standish finished his pint, and said, too quickly, obviously trying to silence the ferryman, “One for the road?”
Lincoln looked at his watch. “Better not. I’ve an early start in the morning.” He stood. “Keep in touch, okay? How about coming over t
o the Fleece one night? There’s a great crowd there, and the beer’s excellent.”
Standish smiled. “I’ll do that,” he said, knowing full well that he would do nothing of the sort.
He sat for a while after Lincoln had left, contemplating his empty glass, then went to the bar for a refill. The room was empty, save for himself. He’d have a couple more after this one, then go home. Amanda would no doubt comment on the reek of alcohol and make some barbed remark about driving while over the limit, but by that time Standish would be past caring.
He thought about Sarah Roberts and the impossibility of her murder. The image of the woman, ethereally angelic, floated into his vision. The tech from the Onward Station had been unable to ascertain if Roberts could be saved, and seemed nonplussed at the dysfunction of her implant.
The entire affair had an air of insoluble mystery that made Standish uncomfortable. The unmarked snow, the circular melt, the failure of her implant… Perhaps it was as well that he wouldn’t be working on the case.
His mobile rang, surprising him. “Doug?”
“Amanda?” he said.
“I thought you said you’d be back by six?” Her clipped Welsh tone sounded peremptory, accusing.
“Something came up. I’m working late.”
“Well, I have to go out. Kath’s babysitter’s let her down at the last minute. I’ll be back around midnight. Your dinner’s in the microwave.”
“Fine. Bye—”
But she had cut the connection.
Five minutes later he finished his drink and was about to go to the bar for another when, through the window, he saw a small blue VW Electro halt at the crossroads, signal right, and then turn carefully on the gritted surface.
On impulse he stood and hurried from the bar. He was over the limit, but he gave it no thought as he slipped in behind the wheel of the Renault and set off in pursuit of the VW.
Amanda’s best friend, Kath, lived in Bradley, five miles in the opposite direction to where Amanda was heading now.
Seconds later, through the darkness, he made out a set of rear lights. The VW was crawling along at jogging pace. Amanda always had been too cautious a driver. He slowed so as not to catch her up, and only then wondered why he was following her.