Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Ring any bells? Other than the submarine kind, I mean.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never seen anything like this. Do you have any other information?”

  Floyd offered him the letter from Berlin. “Just this.”

  “It clearly refers to the same contract,” Basso said, reading down the paper, his lips moving softly as he mouthed the German. “Three spheres. Copper-aluminium alloy, with very high machining tolerances. Here’s something about the support mechanism. Acoustic dampening, if I’m not misreading it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s an arrangement designed to cut down on the transmission of vibrations.”

  “And how would it work?”

  “That would depend on the application. If the sphere was the source of the vibrations, like the engine in a submarine, then it might need to be cushioned so that those vibrations didn’t escape out through the hull and into the surrounding water, where they could be picked up by enemy sonar.”

  “It doesn’t look like any kind of marine engine to me,” Floyd said.

  “No… it doesn’t. Which raises the other possibility, which is that the sphere is the thing that has to be protected from vibrations.”

  “What sort of thing are you thinking of?”

  “It could be almost anything,” Basso said. “Any kind of sensitive scientific or commercial apparatus might benefit from that kind of protection.”

  “Guess that narrows it down slightly,” Floyd said. “For a while back there we wondered if it might be some kind of bomb.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s what it is. The apparent solidity,” he mused, ticking off key points on his fingers, “the very precise machining specifications, the need for dampening—they all point to it being some kind of measurement apparatus. What kind, I couldn’t begin to imagine.” Basso returned the paper to Floyd. “Of course, I could be completely wrong.”

  “But you might be on the right track.” Floyd finished the thick, black coffee. It was like pouring hot asphalt down his throat. “Thanks, Basso. You’ve been helpful.”

  “Although it probably wasn’t worth your driving all the way over here to see me.”

  “That’s all right,” Floyd said. “I had to bring the patient with me, didn’t I?”

  Basso rubbed his hands. “Let’s have a look at her, shall we?”

  Floyd stopped on the way home to pick up provisions and have a leisurely lunch at a café near the Trocadero. By two he was back at his desk, pulling out his notebook and thumbing through to Blanchard’s number. It was much earlier than the time he had arranged to call Custine, but he was anxious to know if there had been any progress with the wireless set.

  Floyd let the telephone ring for half a minute, hung up and then waited a minute or two before trying again, with no success. He concluded that Blanchard must have been elsewhere, perhaps upstairs in Susan White’s room, if he hadn’t left the building entirely. He tried once more five minutes later, but still there was no answer.

  Floyd was placing the receiver back on its cradle when he noticed something that had been pushed beneath the squat, black pedestal of the telephone. It was a sheet of folded paper, and it had not been there that morning. He pulled it out and opened it up. He recognised a block of text in Custine’s very neat, curlicued handwriting. The message read:

  Dear Floyd

  I hope and pray that you find this letter in good time. I could have placed it openly on your desk, or even in your pigeonhole, but for reasons that will shortly become apparent, I believe this would have been a very unwise course of action.

  I have just returned by taxi from rue des Peupliers. I find myself in a great deal of trouble. I must not say too much, for the less you know about it, the less chance there will be of my friends from the Quai finding some way of connecting it to you. In any case, I am sure they will be in touch with you soon. In the meantime, I must make myself scarce. I do not think it is safe for me to remain in Paris for very much longer. I will try to make contact, but for both our sakes, I suggest you make no effort to find me.

  Now destroy this message. And then take very good care of yourself.

  Your friend and colleague AC

  PS—I do not think Heimsoth and Reinke make typewriters.

  Floyd sat, stunned. He re-read the message, hoping that he had been hallucinating, but nothing about the letter had changed. Something had happened and now Custine was on the run.

  He felt as if he needed a drink. He picked up the bottle to pour himself a finger of brandy, but then returned it to the table unopened. What he really needed, some quiet, detached voice told him, was utter clarity of mind, and he needed it fast.

  The case had been progressing smoothly. They were on to something big—he’d become increasingly sure of that—but nothing had prepared him for this sudden, savage turn of events. What could possibly have happened? He replayed the sequence of events in his mind, thinking about Custine’s intentions for the day. Everything had been normal when he left Custine at Blanchard’s building earlier that morning, complete with his tools. The big man had planned to have another listen to the wireless, to see if those Morse signals came through again. He’d also intended to quiz the missing tenant on the second floor, and to nibble around the delicate matter that Blanchard might have had something to do with the murder. There was scope for the old man to have taken offence if Custine had barged in with a tactless line of questioning, but that was the last thing Custine would have done. His experiences in the Quai had made him much better at that tact and diplomacy stuff than Floyd.

  So what the hell had happened?

  Floyd’s hands were trembling. Get a grip, he told himself sternly. What Custine needed now was for Floyd to stay in control. The way to stop himself collapsing into a bundle of nerves was to act, to keep moving.

  His first instinct was to drive to rue des Peupliers, but it hadn’t been his plan to go there until later in the afternoon. The one thing he didn’t want to do was anything that might suggest he’d received a communication from Custine. But there’d been no answer when he telephoned Blanchard. Perhaps that would have prompted him to fire up the Mathis and drive across town, even if he hadn’t seen the letter on his desk… or perhaps it would never have crossed his mind that there was a problem.

  Do something, he told himself.

  He re-read the letter. No clue as to Custine’s current whereabouts, so no need for Floyd to bluff about that if anyone asked him. Although he had a suspicion… He put it out of his mind—it would be safer for both of them if he didn’t even speculate about where Custine might be holed up.

  He read it again, forcing his hands to still themselves. The reference to the typewriter: what was that about? Had something finally jogged Custine’s memory?

  Do something.

  Floyd went to a shelf and pulled down a commercial directory for the Paris area. He flipped through until he reached the “H” section and then ran his finger down the page until he found the entry for the Paris office of Heimsoth and Reinke, more than a little surprised to discover that the firm even existed.

  Quickly he dialled the number.

  “Heimsoth and Reinke,” said an efficient female voice. “May I help you?”

  “I have an electric typewriter that needs repairing. Can you tell me if there is a location in the Paris area that deals with that sort of thing?”

  “A typewriter?” she asked, sounding surprised, Floyd thought.

  “It’s a Heimsoth and Reinke model. I found it amongst the items I inherited when my aunt passed away. It doesn’t seem to work, but it looked rather expensive and so I imagined it might be worth having it fixed to sell on.”

  “There must be some mistake. This firm doesn’t make typewriters, and it certainly doesn’t repair them.”

  “But the box the typewriter’s in says—”

  He could hear the woman’s patience wearing thin. “Heimsoth and Reinke make enciphering equipment, not typewriters. Our most pop
ular model is the Enigma, which might conceivably be mistaken for a typewriter.” The tone of her voice told him that only the very ignorant could possibly have made this mistake.

  Floyd asked, “What would my aunt have been doing with an enciphering machine? I thought such things were meant for spies and soldiers.”

  “That’s a common misconception. Over the last thirty years we’ve sold many thousands of Enigma machines to various parties, including banks and businesses that wish to protect their commercial interests. Of course, the military models are more complicated, but there’s no law that says an individual can’t own an Enigma machine. Are you still interested in having it repaired, assuming that it is indeed broken?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Floyd said. “In the meantime, thank you for your assistance.”

  As Floyd placed the receiver back on its cradle there was a knock at the door. But the timbre of the sound was wrong, somehow, as if someone was already inside the apartment. Floyd had no sooner arrived at this conclusion when he observed three pairs of polished shoes approaching him across the floor of the adjoining room. He looked up, taking in two uniformed officers of the Quai and a third man, alarmingly young and sleek, who was dressed in the long raincoat and heavy serge suit of a plainclothesman. The uniformed officers retained their hats, but the plainclothes inspector had already removed his bowler.

  “Can I help you—” Floyd started.

  The plainclothesman spoke as the three of them entered the main office. “I’m so very glad to find you at work, Monsieur Floyd. I heard you on the telephone—I hope we aren’t interrupting anything important.”

  FOURTEEN

  “I have no idea what this is about,” Floyd said, “but where I come from, it’s customary to knock.”

  “But we did,” the young inspector said pleasantly.

  “I meant knock and then wait to be invited in. As a matter of fact, you might even try calling ahead to make an appointment. It’s called common courtesy.”

  The inspector smiled. “But we did. Unfortunately, the line was busy whenever we tried. Of course, that convinced us that there was someone home now, otherwise we would have paid you a visit later this afternoon.”

  “And the purpose of this visit is what?”

  “My apologies,” the young plainclothesman said. “I am Inspector Belliard of the Crime Squad.” He stopped in front of Floyd’s desk and picked up a black china paperweight in the shape of a horse that had been holding a ream of typed and carbon-copied documentation in check. “Nice antique,” Belliard said. “It would make a wonderful blunt instrument.” He tossed the horse to one of his partners, who fumbled the catch and let it drop to the floor, where it shattered into a dozen jagged pieces.

  Floyd fought to keep a lid on his temper—the one thing they clearly wanted him to do was lose it badly. “That almost looked deliberate,” he said. “Of course, we both know it was an accident.”

  “I’ll writ you a chit for it. You can claim compensation at the Quai.”

  “Do they hand out chits for electrocution burns? I might need one of those as well.”

  “What an odd question,” Belliard said, smiling thinly. He moved to the window, pulling back the blinds to examine the view. Floyd noticed that for a moment neither Belliard nor his men had their eyes on his desk. He used the instant to slip Custine’s letter back under the telephone, hoping that none of the men would notice the sudden movement or the slight chime as the handset resettled on its cradle.

  “I guess you’re here to harass my partner,” Floyd said.

  Belliard turned from the window, blowing a line of dust from his fingers. “Harass your colleague, Monsieur Floyd? Why on Earth would we want to do that?”

  “Because it’s what you’ve always done?”

  The young man scratched the tip of his nose. He had a very slender face, nearly hairless, like one of the dummies Floyd frequently saw in the windows of gentlemen’s outfitters. Even his eyebrows appeared to have been pencilled in. “Funny you should mention your partner,” the man said, “because it’s Custine we were hoping to have a chat with.”

  “I know all about your ‘little chats,’ ” Floyd said. “They usually involve a quick trip to the bottom of the stairs.”

  “You’re much too cynical,” Belliard said, chidingly. “It doesn’t become you, Monsieur Floyd.”

  “I’ve grown into it like an old shoe.”

  “These are new times, a new Paris.”

  Floyd picked up a pencil and rolled it between his fingers. “I think I preferred the old one. It smelled better.”

  “Then maybe you should air out the place a little,” Belliard said, opening the office window. A sudden stiff breeze blew through the room, sending papers flying on to the carpet and slamming shut the main and connecting doors. Belliard turned from the window and walked towards Floyd, making no effort to avoid the case notes and paperwork now littering the floor. “There. Better already. It wasn’t the city that had a bad smell about it, it was your office.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Let’s stop playing games, shall we?” Belliard moved back to the side of the desk directly opposite Floyd and planted the heels of his hands on the edge of it. He was looking Floyd straight in the eye. “There’s been a murder in the Blanchard building.”

  “I know,” Floyd said. “I’m the poor sap investigating it.”

  “Not that one. I mean the one that happened about three hours ago.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Blanchard is dead. He was found on the pavement beneath his balcony, just like the unfortunate Mademoiselle White.” Belliard looked at one of his men. “You know, perhaps there was something in that business after all.”

  Genuinely shocked despite the forewarning in Custine’s message, Floyd found it difficult to form the words he wanted to say. “Blanchard’s dead? Blanchard’s actually been murdered?”

  Belliard looked at him with pale, discriminating eyes, as if judging the exact degree by which Floyd was surprised. “Yes,” he said, his thin, bloodless lips moving but the sound reaching Floyd delayed, as if travelling across a great divide. “And the unfortunate thing is that the last person seen in his presence was your associate Custine. As a matter of fact, he was observed leaving the building in something of a rush.”

  “Custine didn’t do it,” Floyd said automatically.

  “You sound astonishingly sure of that. How could you possibly know that, unless the man himself has offered you an explanation or an alibi?”

  “Because I know Custine. I know he wouldn’t do something like that.” Floyd’s throat was suddenly dry. Without asking anyone’s permission, he poured himself a sip of brandy and knocked it back.

  “How can you be so certain? Do you have that much insight into his character?”

  “I have all the insight I need,” Floyd snapped, “and it wouldn’t matter a damn whether I did or not, because it still wouldn’t make any sense. Blanchard took us on to solve his homicide case—why would one of us murder our own client?”

  “Maybe there was always an ulterior motive,” Belliard said. “Or perhaps the murder was completely impulsive: an act of sudden, blinding rage, entirely without premeditation.”

  “Not Custine,” Floyd said. His eyes drifted to the telephone, where the slip of white paper was still jutting out visibly from underneath the base, in spite of his attempt to hide it. Belliard couldn’t see it from his present angle, and might not make anything of it if he could, but if he did notice it… Floyd felt nausea flood through him like water through the Hoover Dam.

  “No matter what he may have told you, André Custine was a violent man,” Belliard said, almost sympathetically. “A man died in custody under his questioning. You knew that, didn’t you? An innocent man, as it happened; not that his innocence would have been much consolation while Custine was breaking every finger on one of his hands.”

  “No!” Floyd said, aghast.

  “I see from your expression
that he didn’t tell you. What a shame. All this might have been avoided, otherwise.”

  Feeling detached from himself, as if bobbing above his body like an invisible balloon, Floyd said, “What do you mean?”

  “Simply that Blanchard might still be alive. Evidently, Custine lost it again.” Belliard pursed his lips disapprovingly, as if being forced to listen to an off-colour joke. “There’s no telling what might have set him off.”

  “Don’t you idiots get it?” Floyd said. “There was one homicide connected with the Susan White case and now there’s been another. Don’t go trying to pin this on Custine just because of his past, just because you and he have some unfinished business. You’ll be going after the wrong man while the right man gets away with it again.”

  “A nice theory,” Belliard said, “and I’d be tempted to give it the time of day if there wasn’t one niggling little detail out of place.”

  Floyd closed the telephone directory, trying to make the action seem as casual and automatic as possible. “Which is?”

  “If your man Custine is the innocent party here—just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—then why was he in such a hurry to leave the scene of the crime?”

  “I don’t know,” Floyd said. “You’ll have to ask him that yourselves. No, actually, I do know: Custine was no fool. He’d have known exactly how you’d try to pin this on him, for old time’s sake.”

  “Then you allow that he may have fled the scene?”

  “I allow nothing,” Floyd said.

  “When was the last time you saw Custine?”

  “This morning.” Floyd noticed that one of the other officers was writing notes in a spiral-bound notebook with a black marbled fountain pen. “I dropped him at the Blanchard place while I went off to make some other enquiries.”