“But he could have been elsewhere in the building at the time, couldn’t he? Then he would have got out with all the others when the fire alarm went off.”
“We thought of that. We showed his picture to everyone who was in the building that day and nobody remembers seeing him. In any case, all the evidence points to a major equipment overload as the cause of the fire, which means there must have been some sort of experiment in progress down there. If he wasn’t running it, who was? And the fact remains, he hasn’t been seen since.”
“Have you tried his flat?”
“Yes. We sent an officer to the address on your records but nobody was there. In fact it had been cleared out. The landlord wasn’t very pleased. He said the rent hadn’t been paid for some time.”
“He might have gone home. It was a bank holiday weekend.”
“We checked with the next of kin. He wasn’t there and they weren’t expecting him. Tell me, Professor, do you know what Dukas was doing in that lab?”
And of course, poor old Professor Ledsham would go on to explain that Rodge was continuing his investigations into the effect of electromagnetic radiation on living organisms. No one would ever know what really went on.
I kept the GPS receiver, but I wiped the memory. It wouldn’t have been a good idea to keep the GPS coordinates of about thirty unsolved crimes in there. Back in the flat I found the notebooks with all Rodge’s calculations. I’m not clever enough to understand them, but it seemed sensible to remove them before I disposed of the rest of his stuff. He hadn’t told anyone he was coming in with me, and I sure as hell hadn’t told my landlord, so they wouldn’t have a clue where he’d been living.
I think I’ve had my fill of research. I mean, after what I was doing with Rodge anything else would be an anticlimax. Maybe one day people will do it again, and travel to the other side of the globe in an instant, or to the moon or the planets. We were just ahead of our time, that’s all, Rodge and me. I really ought to write it all down, just to prove we were the first to do it. Maybe I could write a book about it, except of course there’s no way I could ever publish it.
I rang Suzy’s own mobile after a while but there was no answer. Later on I tried to get her at her flat, but she wasn’t there, and Siobhan hadn’t seen her. There was something on the news the following morning. They hadn’t released her name yet but it was pretty obvious what had happened. The Fire Brigade had gone in to remove what was left of the shutter and when they did they found her body. I don’t know whether it was the enormous heat from the melting shutter that killed her, or a lungful of smoke and molybdenum vapour. I hadn’t meant for her to get hurt. I was kind of hoping that with Rodge out of the way we could pick up where we left off, leave the country, perhaps go to Costa Rica or something. After all, I had getting on for two million in cash. Still, I suppose she brought it on herself, and if I’m honest I never really felt the same way about her after Rodge started humping her.
I don’t know who the other girl was. The TV crew filmed her Mum and Dad and two sisters outside the hospital; they’d come down from Oldham to see her. I suppose when Rodge tied her up he left her further away from the shutter, so she survived, although she had to be treated for smoke inhalation and burns on her legs from flying gobs of molten metal. It was just as well her head was inside a pillow case at the time. It sounds like she wasn’t badly hurt. Anyway she’s lucky to have such a nice supportive family.
If they ever track me down, I’ll just say I was an old friend, and yes, I did pay him a visit in his lab and played squash with him once or twice, but no, I didn’t understand what he was doing, all that stuff was well beyond me, sorry.
But I’m not going to wait around for that to happen. Apart from anything else, I can’t spend the money here without attracting attention. No, I’ll go abroad like we planned to do in the first place. I fancy Australia but I hear they have some mammoth spiders there so I might try for New Zealand instead. They should accept me. After all, it’s not as if I’m unqualified; I do have a B.Sc. in Physics—oh, and by the way, I passed my exams, so I now have an M.Sc. in Inventions and the Law as well, for what that’s worth. Not to mention more than adequate finance.
I’ll attend Rodge’s memorial service before I leave, though. I like to do the right thing.
EPILOGUE
So here I am, still in the queue, with one person left in front of me. Now that it’s all over and people have paid their respects, most of them have gone home. A few have stayed on, though, standing around quietly or talking in low voices. One or two are looking up at the grey sky from time to time to see if it’s going to rain and I’m still trying to think of what I’m going to say. And now the person in front of me is moving away and suddenly here I am, standing in front of her.
Rodger’s Mum.
Mrs. Dukas.
She has a sort of empathic smile, like she already knows what I’ll be trying to say. And she extends her hand to me, and it seems awfully small, like a little bird, so I have to be careful not to squeeze it, because I can be a bit clumsy like that.
“Er, hallo, Mrs. Dukas. I’m Michael. I was a friend. I’m very sorry.”
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