“Then discount that hypothesis,” the landlord said. “Consider instead the possibility that she was pushed.”
“Or that she jumped,” Floyd said. He closed his notebook with a snap. “All right, I think we have enough here for now. You’ll keep this room as it is for the time being?”
“Until the matter is resolved,” Blanchard assured him.
Floyd patted Custine on the back. “C’mon. Let’s have a chat with the other tenants, see what they have to say.”
Custine leaned down and picked up the biscuit tin from where Floyd had left it, next to the wireless. “The door to this apartment,” he said, addressing Blanchard. “Was it locked when they found her?”
“No. It was open.”
“Then she could have been murdered,” Custine said.
“Or she could have left the door open because she had something else on her mind,” Floyd said. “It doesn’t prove anything. What about the front door—was that open as well?”
“No,” Blanchard said. “It was locked. But it’s a slam lock. When the murderer left, he would only have had to close it behind him: he didn’t need a key for that.”
“And you haven’t noticed anything missing from here?”
“I’d have mentioned it if I had.”
Custine patted the tin. “Maybe they were looking for this but didn’t find it because she’d already passed it on to Monsieur Blanchard.”
“Did anything in that box look like it was worth murdering someone for?” Floyd said.
“No,” Custine replied, “but when I was at the Quai, I saw people murdered for a loaf of bread.”
Floyd turned to the landlord. “I’ll telephone you tomorrow if I have any news, otherwise I’ll just continue my investigations until I have something worth reporting.”
“I would like to hear from you every day, irrespective of your findings.”
Floyd shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”
“You may call me in the evening. At the end of each week, I will expect a typewritten progress report, together with a breakdown of the running expenses.”
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Something awful happened in this room,” Blanchard said. “I can feel it, even if you can’t. Mademoiselle White was frightened and a long way from home. Someone came and killed her, and that isn’t right.”
“I understand,” Floyd said.
They had almost reached the door when Blanchard spoke again. “There is something I forgot to mention. It might not mean anything, but Mademoiselle White kept an electric typewriter in her room.” He stood with his hand on a large wooden cabinet that was resting on a small bow-legged table. “It was a German model—the name of the firm was Heimsoth and Reinke, I believe—very heavy. This was the box it came in.”
“An odd thing for a tourist to carry around with them,” Floyd said.
“I asked her about it, and all she would say was that she was practising her touch-typing, so that she wouldn’t be out of form when she returned home.”
“You’re right to mention it,” Floyd said. “It’s probably not important, but every bit helps.”
“Perhaps we should look at the typewriter,” Custine said.
“That’s the point,” Blanchard replied. “It doesn’t exist any more. The typewriter was found smashed to pieces on the pavement, next to Mademoiselle White.”
FOUR
“Hello, Verity,” said Auger’s ex-husband. “Excuse me for dropping by, but our mutual friends were beginning to wonder if you were still alive.”
Peter Auger was tanned and muscular, like a man who had just returned from a long and relaxing holiday rather than a gruelling diplomatic tour of the Federation of Polities. He wore a very expensive olive-green suit, offset with a scarlet satin neckerchief and the tasteful gold pin of the diplomatic corps. His bright-green eyes glittered like cut emeralds, twinkling with permanent amused fascination at everything and everyone around him.
“Of course I’m still alive,” Auger said grumpily. “It’s called house arrest. It makes socialising something of a challenge.”
“You know what I mean. You haven’t been answering the phone or p-mail.” To illustrate his point, Peter indicated the accumulating heap of message cylinders cluttering the in-bound hopper of Auger’s pneumatic tube.
“I’ve been getting my head together.”
“You can’t go on like this. When they do come calling you need to be strong, not some gibbering wreck. I heard that the preliminary hearing was scheduled for later this morning.”
“You heard right.”
“You seem remarkably relaxed about it.”
“It’s just a formality, a chance for both sides to stare each other out. It’s the full disciplinary tribunal that’s keeping me awake at night.”
Peter sat down, crossing one long leg over the other. For a moment, he studied the picture window, admiring the view of Earth and—superimposed on the brilliant white disc—a nearby precinct of Tanglewood. “They change their plans,” he said. “You need to be ready for surprises, especially now. They like to throw the odd curveball, especially when they’re dealing with someone like you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Someone who’s never gone out of their way to suck up to authority. To put it mildly. I hear you even managed to piss off Caliskan last year. Now that takes some doing.”
“All I did was refuse to put his name on a paper he played no part in preparing. If he had a problem with that, he could have taken it to tribunal.”
“Caliskan pays your salary.”
“He still needs to get his hands dirty if he expects academic credit.” Auger sat down with her back to the picture window, facing Peter across a rough-hewn wooden coffee table. It supported a lopsided black vase containing a dozen dead flowers. “I didn’t set out to aggravate him. I got on fine with DeForrest. It’s not as if I have some automatic aversion to authority.”
“Maybe Caliskan’s had other things on his plate,” Peter said in that quiet, knowing way of his that she had always found as maddening as it was appealing. Charm was what he excelled at. If anyone sensed his underlying shallowness, they usually mistook it for well-hidden great depth of character, like misinterpreting a radar bounce.
“How would you know, Peter?”
“I’m just saying that making enemies isn’t the only way to get ahead in a career.”
“I don’t make enemies,” she said. “I just don’t like people getting in the way of my research interests.”
“It was Paula’s birthday last week.”
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just with all this—”
“Her birthday was a couple of days before any of that nastiness in Paris. ‘All this’ had nothing to do with it.” Peter, as always, sounded calm and sympathetic even when he was rebuking her. “Have you any idea how much that kind of thing means to a nine-year-old?”
“I’m sorry, all right? I’ll send her a message, if that will make you happier.”
“It’s not about making me happier. It’s about your daughter.”
Suddenly she felt pathetic and shameful. “I know. Fuck, I’m useless. She doesn’t deserve me as a mother, just as you didn’t deserve me as a wife.”
“Please—not the self-pity thing. I didn’t come to tick you off about Paula. She’s a kid, she’ll get over it. I just thought a gentle reminder might be in order.”
Auger buried her face in her hands. From nowhere, after five days of stolid defiance, she had finally broken into tears. Was she sorry for her daughter, or for herself? She did not particularly care to know.
“Why did you come, then?” she mumbled through her hands.
“To see how you’re holding up.”
She glared at him through sore, red eyes. “Absolutely fucking splendidly, as you can see.”
There was a whoosh and a pop as another message tube slid into the hopper, clanging against those already languishing in it. Aug
er didn’t even glance at it. Like all the others that had arrived in the last day, she was certain it was from an anonymous taunter. Why else send her maps of Paris, if not to rub her nose in what had happened?
“The other reason I’ve come,” Peter said, after a dignified pause, “is to see if I can offer any help. I can arrange for strings to be pulled.”
“With your new friends in high places?”
“Political connections aren’t something to be ashamed of,” Peter replied, with the assurance of a man who actually believed it.
Her own voice sounded frail and distant. “How was it?”
“Quite a trip.”
“I’m almost envious.”
Peter’s diplomatic work had often taken him into the Polity-controlled territories on the edge of the solar system. But his last mission had taken him much further: deep into the galaxy, via the hyperweb.
“You’d have enjoyed it,” Peter said. “Of course, bits of it were absolutely terrifying… but worth it, I think.”
“I hope you showed appropriate awe and humility,” Auger said.
“It wasn’t like that at all. They seemed genuinely delighted to have someone else to show all this stuff to.”
“Look,” she said, “I could be less sceptical about all this if I thought our co-operation was what they were really interested in.”
“And you don’t believe they are?”
“You know what the small print says. We get access to the hyperweb—on their very strict and limiting terms, I need hardly add—and in return they get access to Earth—also on their terms, funnily enough.”
“That’s not quite how I read it. Why shouldn’t they get something in return? They’re offering us the entire galaxy, for pity’s sake. Earth—a frozen, dangerous, uninhabitable Earth—seems a small price to pay for that. And it’s not as if we’re talking about handing them the entire planet on a plate.”
“Give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.”
Peter kneaded his forehead, as if trying to make a headache go away. “At least we’d have secured something for ourselves. One thing we need to understand—now more than ever—is that the Slashers don’t constitute a single political bloc, however much it might suit our own ends to view them that way. It’s certainly not the way they see the Federation. They view it as a loose, shifting alliance of various progressive interests, each with their own take on the best way to deal with Earth. It’s no secret that there are factions amongst the Polities that favour a more aggressive policy.”
A small chill shivered through Auger. “Such as?”
“Use your imagination. They want Earth very badly, especially now that they can see a clear strategy for ousting the furies and initiating terraforming. All that’s standing in the way, in all honesty, is us and our more moderate allies amongst the Slashers. The pragmatist in me says that we should do a deal with the moderates while a deal is still on the table.”
“For ‘pragmatist’ read ‘cold-hearted cynic,’ ” Auger said, and then immediately felt ashamed of it, because she knew it was unfair. “Look, sorry. I know you mean well, Peter, and some of what you say probably makes a kind of twisted sense, but that doesn’t mean I have to like any of it.”
“Like it or not, co-operation with the Polities is the only way forward.”
“Maybe,” Auger replied, “but they’ll set foot on Earth over my dead body.”
Peter gave her that infuriating smile. “Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when that tribunal rolls around you’re going to be facing an extremely competent prosecution witness. That’s why I’m anxious to offer any help I can.”
“What do you mean? What prosecution witness?”
“The girl—Cassandra?”
Auger studied Peter intensely, through slitted eyes. “What don’t I know about her?”
“She’s a Polity citizen. She may look like a girl, but she’s a fully grown adult, with an adult’s faculties and an adult’s ruthlessness.”
Auger shook her head. “No. Not possible.” But then she recalled the girl’s odd reaction after the incident in Paris and the agile, prickly way she had defended collaboration with the Slashers. Then she remembered the sleek cobalt-blue form of the Slasher spacecraft docked inside Antiquities.
“It’s true,” Peter said. He started picking through the dead flowers in the vase, frowning as he sought some final rearrangement of the shrivel-headed stems.
“Then how in hell did she slip through our security?”
“She didn’t. Her presence on your field trip was officially sanctioned.”
“And no one thought to tell me?”
“Her presence was a very sensitive matter. If things hadn’t gone so wrong, no one would have known about it.”
“And now they’re going to blow it all out into the open in a tribunal?”
“They’ve decided that having Cassandra testify will be exactly the right gesture to consolidate ties with moderate Slashers. It will show that we trust them to play an active part in our judicial processes.”
“Even if that means hanging me out to dry?”
Peter spread his perfectly manicured hands. “I said I’d do what I can. Officially, I shouldn’t even have mentioned Cassandra to you.”
“How did you find out?”
“Like I said, not all political contacts are necessarily a bad thing.” He pulled out two stems and placed them side by side on the table, like fallen soldiers. “If Caliskan offered you a deal, would you take it?”
“A deal? What sort of deal?”
“Just a thought, that’s all.” He pushed himself to his feet, smoothing out the creases in his suit. “I’d best be going. It probably wasn’t a good idea to come here in the first place.”
“I suppose I should say thanks.”
“Don’t go breaking the habit of a lifetime.”
“I’m sorry about Paula’s birthday. I’ll make it up to her. Tell her that, won’t you? And give my love to Andrew. Don’t let them think I’m a bad mother.”
“You’re not a bad mother,” Peter said. “You’re not even a bad person. It’s just that you’ve let that planet… that city… Paris… take over your life, like some kind of possessive lover. You know, I think I could have handled things better if you’d actually had an affair.”
“If I don’t look after Paris, no one else will.”
“Is that worth a marriage and the love of two children?” Peter held up his hand. “No, don’t answer that. Just think about it. It’s too late for us.”
The flat certainty of this rather surprised her. “You think so?”
“Of course. The fact that we’re even able to have this conversation without throwing things around proves that.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“But do think about your children,” Peter said. “Go into that tribunal prepared to be humble and to tell the truth, and say that you’ve made mistakes and you’re sorry about them. Then I think you may have some hope of walking out of there.”
“And of keeping my job?”
“I didn’t promise miracles.”
She stood up and took his hand, feeling it fit into her own with heartbreaking familiarity, as if they had been carved for each other.
“I’ll do my best,” Auger said. “There’s too much work left for me to do. I’m not going to let those bastards screw me over just to make a political point.”
“That’s the spirit,” Peter said. “But remember what I said about humility?”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
She waited until he was gone before taking the vase and all its dead flowers into the kitchen, where she tipped the flowers into the waste.
“Verity Auger?”
“Yes.”
“Take the stand, please.”
The preliminary hearing took place in a high vaulted chamber in a part of Antiquities she had never visited before, but which had only involved a short escorted ride from her apartment. All around the room, v
ast photographic frescos cycled through scenes from pre-Nanocaust Earth.
“Let’s begin,” said the chairwoman, addressing Auger from a raised podium backdropped by the flag of the USNE. “It is the preliminary finding of this special disciplinary committee that your actions in Paris led to the death of the student Sebastian Nerval…”
Auger was the only one who did not turn to look at the boy, cradled in an upright recovery couch with a halo of delicate Slasher-manufactured machines still fussing around his skull, like so many attendant cherubim and seraphim.
“Objection,” said Auger’s Antiquities defence attorney, rustling papers on his desk. “The student is present in the room today.”
“Your point being?” the chairwoman asked.
“My point being that he can hardly be said to have ‘died’ in any meaningful sense.”
“The law makes no distinction between permanent and temporary death,” the chairwoman replied, with the weary tone of someone who had already made this point on numerous occasions. “The boy only survived by virtue of the fact that Polity medicine was on hand. Since this cannot normally be counted upon, it will play no mitigating role in the hearing.”
The defence attorney’s round, molelike face was not in any way enhanced by the round, molelike spectacles he favoured. “But the simple fact of the matter is that he didn’t die.”
“Objection overruled,” the chairwoman said. “And—if I might make a suggestion—you would be wise to familiarise yourself with the basic tenets of United States of Near Earth law before stepping into this room again.”
The attorney rummaged through his papers, as if searching for the one half-forgotten clause that would prove him correct. Auger watched as the papers slid from the desk into his lap, spilling to the floor. He leaned forward to collect them, knocking his spectacles against the side of the desk.
The chairwoman ignored him, turning instead to the woman sitting to Auger’s right. “Cassandra… that’s the name you prefer to be known by, isn’t it?”
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