I stayed in the flat. I think I must have slept most of the time. I don’t know why I was so exhausted. We’d done an awful lot of projections in the last couple of weeks, though, and I was beginning to wonder if it was having a cumulative effect on me. Going into resonance hadn’t seemed to do the rat any harm, but we’d only tested it with a few projections. I’d done dozens by now.
*
There must be an art to coaching. Olympic athletes have to be at their best in time for the Games. A football team has to work like a well-oiled machine when they go into a major Cup match. Well, whatever that talent was, Mike didn’t have it. His solution was just to drive us harder. We were back together on Tuesday evening, rehearsing intensively, to no good purpose. Our times were getting worse, not better. We’d missed our peak. In spite of the break we were stale.
Wednesday came, and after practising for the whole evening we sat round the kitchen table, bleary-eyed, saying nothing, just picking at yet another take-away. Mike pushed himself away from the table.
“All right. It’s crunch time. Do we go in tomorrow or not?”
He looked from me to Suzy and back again. Of the three of us, he still seemed to have the most energy.
I toyed with an expanded polystyrene tray full of luke-warm noodles.
“We’ve prepared pretty well,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll ever be more ready than we are now.”
“Suzy?”
“Well if we don’t go tomorrow it’s another two weeks before the next delivery. I don’t think I could take another two weeks of this.”
“Okay. Tomorrow it is. Rodge, we’re going to have to go in at six-thirty to get the equipment warmed up. Is that going to be a problem?”
“Christ, Mike, can’t we..? Look, I don’t think so. I’ll just use my card key. There’s no one at the security desk at that time and even if we run into a patrol it won’t be the first time they’ve seen me coming and going at odd hours. If they ask, well, we’ve simply got a long experiment to do, and we’re starting early because we want to get away tonight for the Bank Holiday.”
“If that happens it won’t look good if we walk out at lunch-time.”
“No, all right, we’ll have to go back to the flat later in the day. But I don’t think it’s going to happen. Okay?”
Suzy clapped her hands over her ears.
“Oh, I’m so sick of it! ‘If this, if that.’ I just wish the whole thing were over and done with!”
Mike’s mouth set.
“It will be soon enough, Suzy, and then you can relax. You’ll be a wealthy young lady.”
41
However hard you try to cover every eventuality, it seems there’s always something you overlook. Mike and I were poised and ready to go, waiting for Suzy’s phone call, and it was already several minutes past eight. Our precious margin was beginning to evaporate. I was waiting tensely in the cage, holding the duffel bag. I was wearing the balaclava, the gun was in its holster, the pillow case was in my pocket, and precut lengths of rope were looped through my belt. Mike was waiting by the control panel, biting his lip. We both jumped when his mobile sounded.
He listened for a moment. Then:
“For Chrissake! All right, get back as fast as you can. Rodge will meet you there.”
He clicked off the phone. His voice was taut.
“She had to call us from the ladies’ loo. Couldn’t get any reception in the secure area—must be some sort of steel reinforcement in the walls. Let’s get moving.”
I heard the relay engage and immediately I was aware of a juxtaposition of unfamiliar surroundings. There was something dark in front of me. I concentrated hard on it and the outline of the cage faded away. I was in the secure area and I was looking at the open safe. Suzy was supposed to be here, getting things ready, but of course there was no one around. I stepped forward and looked inside the safe. It was almost full of heavy-duty polythene bags. I reached in and grabbed the nearest one, tore open the seal and started transferring the money to my open duffel bag. I couldn’t hold the duffel bag open properly so I had to pull out the bundles of notes and stuff them in. I knew we were losing time but I didn’t dare stop to check my watch. The door buzzer went. The gun was in my hand in an instant. The door opened and I relaxed. It was Suzy.
“Sorry, sorry…” she said under her breath, leaving the door to close behind her and hurrying over. I said nothing.
It was a lot easier with Suzy pulling the money bags out and up-ending them into the duffel, just as we’d practised in the flat. She emptied the last of this batch and tossed in the mobile phone, as we’d instructed her. I closed the flap and signalled Mike to return me to the cage. It felt like we’d overrun badly on the first trip and with the late start that wasn’t a good omen. Mike was ready by the door of the cage with the empty duffel bag and I exchanged it for the full one. He’d already flipped the switches to recharge the capacitor bank. He ran quickly round to the control panel, and I could just make out his movements as he adjusted the voltage, brought the power up with the sliders, and pressed the red button. The relay clonked and I was back in the secure area ready to fill the duffel bag for the second time.
We completed the second trip, then the third, fourth and fifth. It was going more smoothly now. We’d fallen into a rhythm, just like when we were rehearsing in the first week. I stole a quick look at my watch as I was preparing to return from trip number six; it was seventeen minutes past eight, almost back on schedule. Then the door buzzer sounded.
Suzy froze. I ducked behind her, the gun already in my hand. Nadine didn’t see me immediately.
“Oh, Suzy. Caroline asked me to tell you…”
She was far enough into the room for me to jump out and gesture to her with the gun. She didn’t move; she’d gone rigid with shock. It was a self-closing door but I moved between it and Nadine just the same and shoved her roughly towards Suzy. That way I could keep both of them covered with the gun, as if Suzy, too, was an innocent party. Nadine was watching me with wide dark eyes, those big front teeth on her lower lip. She started to make little whimpering noises. I turned her around and gave her a sharp poke with the gun to move her on; I thought it would be best to put her where we could keep an eye on her. Then I hissed at her in my rough South London accent:
“No’ a sound! On the floor, feet togevver, hands behind yer back. DO IT!”
I used the precut lengths of rope to tie her wrists and ankles, as we’d rehearsed many times, only I probably pulled them a lot tighter because I was really irritated by the interruption. Then I put the pillow case over her head and kept it in place with another length of rope around her neck. At least I remembered to leave that one loose. I was still on one knee. Without pausing or even moving I signalled Mike. An instant later I was back in the cage, handing over the sixth bag. We had about five minutes left and I still had two bags to fill and Suzy to tie up.
What with the effort and the tension and the damned balaclava I was getting overheated. I tried to wipe the sweat out of my eyes with my sleeve as I went in for the seventh time. We’d done a really quick turn-round in the lab but Suzy was slowing up; she didn’t yet have all the bags out of the safe and open. She was obviously getting tired. I didn’t dare to say anything in case Nadine overheard so I just gritted my teeth and worked at the slower pace. Suzy straightened up wearily and Mike transported me back to the cage with the full duffel. Just one more trip to go.
The relay went clonk for the eighth time and I was back in the secure area. I held the duffel bag open and Suzy shook in one lot of money. As she was doing it I turned my wrist to glance at my watch. It was already eight-twenty six. This was no good; there wouldn’t be enough time to tie Suzy up. There was a quicker way.
I socked her as she straightened up to get another bag. She staggered back, hand half-raised to her jaw, eyes wide with surprise. I was punching only half my weight and I realized straight away that I hadn’t hit her hard enough, so as she bounced off the safe and came forward I
clocked her again, coming up from a crouch and turning my body to get plenty of weight on it. The blow caught her on the jaw, almost lifting her, and the force of it carried her right round towards the door. She back-pedalled, hit the door, and collapsed there in a tangle of limbs. I didn’t give her a second glance but quickly grabbed the next polythene bag, tipping it over the duffel without caring what spilt around it, threw the empty money bag down and reached for another, tipped that too, and then I froze, the empty bag still in my hands. The alarm had gone off. It was a terrible noise, a rising and falling raucous screaming that filled my head. How the hell did they…?
I decided to get out of there. The sound level was tremendous; I couldn’t think straight. I tried to focus my awareness on the cage and succeeded in bringing up the angular outline of the frame but in my muddled vision it was still floating over the entrance door to the secure area, with Suzy’s inert form lying in front of it. I was so confused I probably raised my arm in both places. Nothing happened; the two visuals were still shifting and overlapping. Then my view of the cage sharpened for a brief moment and I saw Mike. But Mike wasn’t at the control panel, and he wasn’t at the door. He was standing just outside the cage, putting a mobile phone back into his pocket. I thought I saw his lips move, but I couldn’t hear a thing for the racket. And then my awareness shifted into the secure area again but only the bottom half of the door was visible now and I saw that the shutter was coming down and I felt myself sucked towards it in a blinding explosion of heat and light…
42
Well you didn’t think I’d let him get away with it, did you? Rodge, my so-called best friend. The bastard. I was waiting for her, waiting so patiently. She said she’d had a bad relationship, so I made allowances, wanting her, aching for her, but holding back until she was ready. And then in walks Rodge and she goes to him like a moth to a flame. To make it worse the pair of them carry on in my own flat. It’s not that big a flat. At night I could hear the rhythmic thumping, and her crying out in pleasure or pain as he went at her. Two or three times a night. And I pulled the pillow over my head and cried with the hurt and the grief and the frustration of it, and swore my time would come.
I didn’t have to rush it; I could afford to wait for the perfect opportunity. The bit of business to get Meredrew was a good confidence-builder. Rodge was obsessed with that, so he didn’t need any persuading, and it had the added advantage of getting Suzy to dip her toe in some muddy water. After that it wasn’t hard to get them both interested in the bigger plan, especially with the amount of money involved. That’s when I saw my chance. I told them it was the perfect crime. They thought I meant the perfect robbery. I meant the perfect murder.
The shutter was made of molybdenum-coated steel. It wasn’t difficult to establish that after I’d asked Suzy to make a note of the manufacturer’s label. I simply rang them up, posing as a jeweller who wanted to make his stock more secure.
“Oh, yes, sir, all of our shutters have the same construction; the only difference is the size. We’d be happy to come and measure up for you. Yes, molybdenum coating on all steel parts, we standardized on that some time ago. It’s why they’re so durable. You can buy shutters of cheaper manufacture, of course, but you’ll have to replace them after a few years, and then it’s not cheaper any more, is it? If you buy one of ours it’s guaranteed for twenty years. It won’t wear and it’ll keep its appearance permanently.”
Well, it will unless you belt a matter wave beam through it.
It’s funny how Rodge was worried what I might do when I had seven bags in front of me. I thought it was a nice touch to let it get exactly that far. Then I projected him back for the last bag. I waited for a few moments and then I punched the number into my mobile and said, in a calm but urgent voice:
“Police here. We’ve been told there’s a robbery in progress at your branch. Would you please activate the alarm immediately? We’ll have a car there in a few minutes.”
I even heard the Bank’s alarm siren starting up before I clicked off. The part of Rodge that was still in the cage hadn’t caught what I was saying, of course; all his attention was focused at the other end. Not that it would have mattered if he had heard something; he couldn’t have done anything about it. He started to lift his arm up and down frantically as I was putting the mobile back in my pocket. I said, “Goodbye, Rodge.” I caught a glimpse of the panic in his eyes and then he’d gone.
Only not completely. On the seat where he’d been a moment ago was a brain. His brain. It looked like a wrinkled blancmange, sagging a little under its own weight, still quivering from having landed there. Coiled behind it was a glistening white rope and the whole chair was enmeshed in a mass of cobwebby strands. And then I remembered what had happened to the spider when I’d dropped the molybdenum steel sample into the matter wave beam, and the greyish-white blobs it left behind. Spiders don’t have a brain as such but they do have a nervous system, so the blobs must have been the larger ganglia. Wasn’t that interesting? There was something different about the matter waves involved in transporting nervous tissue; for some reason they didn’t get absorbed. So when the rest of his body went, the muscles and bones and blood and organs and everything were absorbed but his nervous system got left behind. It was there now, draped all over his chair.
The more I thought about it the more it made sense. That’s how he could transfer his awareness back and forth between the other place and the cage: his brain never left the cage! For a moment I stood there, staring at it. Such a clever brain. But not quite clever enough.
I’d taken the precaution of turning off the cooling water supply in the main electricity cables, and things were cooking nicely by now. The shutter in the bank vault had put a colossal drain on power when it absorbed the matter waves, so circuits had melted and everything was starting to overload. I stood there, calmly watching as the needles went off-scale on all the dials, and smoke started to pour out of the housings. There was a ripping sound of arcing electricity and one of the power supplies exploded, shooting out a rain of fiery fragments. Then another one went, and another. Some cables caught fire and it quickly spread into the cage. I strolled round and opened the cage door to give it a decent draught. Things were still exploding and chunks of burning plastic were flying out in every direction, trailing smoke behind them. I backed slowly towards the door.
A tongue of flame uncurled across the floor, following some unseen track. On the other side of the lab it licked up a wooden bench, outlining in sudden relief two retort stands, with a length of rope clamped between them, and two weights, suspended on strings—the pendulums Rodge had used when he first explained coupled mass resonance to me. Then the strings burned through, the weights fell in a shower of sparks, and the flames fanned out over the bench. And at that point I left.
I waited in the gents toilet upstairs. There weren’t any smoke detectors or sprinklers in the basement so the fire was well established before anyone sounded the alarm. When they evacuated the building I just went out with the crowd. The fire engines were rolling up as I walked away, the money safely stowed in my sports bag. I guessed the crews would have a bit of a job on their hands but they’d probably get it under control. By the time they did there wouldn’t be much left of the lab. Of course that would just be the beginning. There’d be a whole slew of inquiries and, as Dean, poor old Professor Ledsham would bear the brunt of it. I could imagine the conversations he’d be having with the police.
“You know, Professor, the blaze was very nearly out of control. You were very lucky the Fire Service was able to deal with it before it spread to the rest of the building. It seems there weren’t any sprinklers installed down there.”
“No, well there wouldn’t be, Superintendent. It was an electrical lab.”
“The laboratory was in use, then?”
“Only temporarily, some time ago. The basement area was due for refurbishment in the next phase of the Estates Plan. In the meantime I had a Ph.D. student working in there. It was
the only place that had an adequate power supply for what he was doing. After he qualified he stayed on for a short while.”
“You’re talking about Rodger Dukas?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“We checked with the School Administration Office, sir. He was still on the records. You said he stayed on for a short while. Did he tell you when he was leaving?”
“No. That would have been a conventional courtesy, of course, but Dukas wasn’t a conventional student. And I haven’t been down there for a while, myself. Far too much to do up here. I’m afraid I don’t know when he left.”
“Well, Professor, this may come as a shock to you, but we don’t think he’d left at all. In fact we think he was in there when the fire started.”
“What? My God! Did he get out?”
“Probably not. The fire inspection team said there was a lot of burning plastic and other material. He could have been overcome by toxic fumes.”
“Oh, this is unbelievable! I mean, he was an unusual student—a bit lacking in social skills, to be honest—but there’s no denying he was extremely capable. It would be a—look, how sure are you about this? Did you find a, er, any evidence that, er…”
“No, sir. The fire was so intense it left nothing behind. But we’ve checked the security cameras on the front entrance. A man answering the description of the Rodger Dukas in your records was seen entering at six-thirty in the morning on the day of the accident, carrying a sports bag and what looks like a squash racket. Someone came in with him, also carrying a bag and a racket. We assume it was his squash partner but as yet we don’t know who it was. Probably they arranged to meet later in the day. We found the remains of a squash racquet in the lab, which suggests that Dukas had been there.”
“But surely he could have left before the fire started?”
“We think not. As you know, sir, he’s tall, fair-haired, very distinctive. Our people have been through the footage from those security cameras with a fine-toothed comb and he didn’t show up again.”
The Man in Two Bodies (British crime novel): A Dark Science Crime Caper Page 21