Dangerously Placed

by Nansi Kunze

  It was a good thing I’d turned away, or Dale would have been able to feel my breath, and I was practically hyperventilating.

  ‘No, I …’

  The Impression proposal file popped up on screen. Under the title were the words: Approved – P Grody.

  I’d thought Inge or one of the other staff had approved our work for formal planning. But no – Grody must have relented. Even though I knew he’d probably done it just to get us out of his devil-red hair, somehow the fact that he’d bothered to read our proposal in that last hour or so before he died brought a lump to my throat.

  ‘No,’ I repeated, and this time my voice was firm. I turned to Dale. ‘I have been meaning to ask you about the party, though. The one we had to celebrate Grody’s Avatar Robotics deal. Did you get to meet anyone interesting? I hardly saw you.’

  I watched his face carefully, but all I could see was disappointment – no sudden flash of guilt, no jolt of fear that I had discovered his guilty secret. My heart leapt.

  ‘I was stuck talking to Frankie from CGI pretty much the whole time. Do you have any idea how long it takes them to do each layer of graphics in those Southern Power commercials Inge showed us? Well, I could tell you exactly how long, after that conversation. And trust me, there are a lot more layers than you think!’

  Trust him. I was beginning to realise that’s what I’d been doing all along. That was the real reason I’d been thinking about his fine form in tight trousers instead of considering whether he could be a murderer – I’d never really considered it a possibility. And boy, was I relieved to know that all I’d have to do to confirm my belief was check his alibi with Frankie. I took a deep breath.

  ‘About yesterday,’ I began. ‘I thought it was … a shame.’

  ‘A shame?’ Dale’s perfect brow wrinkled.

  ‘That Budi interrupted us,’ I said, over the crazy subwoofer thumping of my heart.

  Dale’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Me too,’ he said, reaching for my hand.

  ‘Alex, Dale! How are you getting on?’

  Elena was peering over the cubicle wall.

  ‘I think we’re getting on very, very well,’ said Dale, with a smile that nearly fried my Virk Suit.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ Elena squeezed her hands together, looking down at us with the compassion of a wartime nurse. ‘You poor dears – it must have been so hard on you, having to come to work after such a terrible tragedy. And yet here you are, bravely soldiering on!’ Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘I’m so proud of you both!’

  ‘Uh … thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Now, I came to see if there was anything I could do to help either of you. Do you have any questions?’

  ‘I can’t think of any,’ said Dale.

  ‘Neither can …’ I paused. ‘Oh, wait, we did have something we wanted to get an opinion on.’

  Dale’s deep blue eyes sought mine, but I resisted the temptation to get rid of Elena straight away. She’d already interrupted us, and she seemed the ideal person to ask about the Impression project. Besides, I told myself, we’re here to work. It was becoming a bit of a mantra for me.

  ‘I’d be delighted to help!’ breathed Elena.

  ‘Well, we’ve got this idea for a kind of virtual-jeans-trying-on system,’ I explained. Elena smiled. ‘I know – it doesn’t sound very catchy, but we’re working on a name, like JeanScan or something. Anyway, we were wondering about what people look for when they go jeans shopping. Not what style, I mean – that’s up to Impression, not us – but … well, when you try a pair of jeans on, are you only interested in the way they look, or is the way they feel important? Because with this system, the scanners would tell you what size you’d be, so it’s not like you’d need to check whether they were too tight or anything, but I wondered if …’ I stopped. Elena was looking confused.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not explaining this well. Does it sound too crazy?’

  ‘No, no, not at all! It’s just that I don’t remember ever having tried on a pair of jeans before.’

  Dale shot me a look of surprise.

  ‘Oh!’ I blinked.

  ‘I’m so sorry that I can’t help you!’ Elena looked crushed now.

  ‘No, it’s fine! There are plenty of people we can ask,’ I assured her. ‘I should’ve realised not everybody’s into jeans.’ I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t found out where Elena lived in my search that morning. Well, here was my chance to ask. ‘I mean, there must be lots of countries where jeans aren’t particularly popular. Where do you come from, Elena?’

  ‘Bogotá. It’s the capital city of Colombia.’

  ‘Wow! What’s it like there?’ asked Dale.

  ‘The part where I live is very beautiful, with open plazas and trees on the street.’ Elena looked pleased to have been asked. ‘It’s not far from the Museo del Oro, the Gold Museum, where tourists come to see all the pre-Hispanic gold artefacts.’

  ‘It sounds lovely. Makes me want to come and visit you in realspace!’ I smiled. ‘How’s the weather there right now – any good for tourists?’

  Elena’s face went blank.

  ‘I … don’t know,’ she said slowly, after a moment.

  ‘Oh.’ What was going on here? ‘Well … that’s okay.’ I looked at Dale, willing him to say something and get me out of this awkward spot, but Elena was already turning away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alex, Dale – I should get back to work,’ she muttered, frowning. ‘I think –’

  Crash!

  I stood up, staring at the main entrance, where the golden door had been thrust open by two tall, blue figures.

  ‘The police!’ breathed Elena.

  The officers, a woman and a man, strode into the room, scanning the faces staring out at them from cubicles and couch. And then they were looking at me.

  ‘There she is!’ said the female officer, and as they ran towards me, I tried to call out to tell them that there’d been a mistake, that I wasn’t the murderer.

  I couldn’t make a sound.

  ‘Elena Sofia Mariposa, you are under arrest,’ said the first officer, and grabbed Elena by the arm. ‘You are not obliged to say or do anything.’

  ‘Elena?’ I gaped at her, unable to believe it.

  ‘Anything you say or do may be recorded and given as evidence. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Elena, but she looked as though she didn’t understand anything any more. Her dark, shocked eyes held mine as they marched her away.

  When I logged back in after lunch, I found Budi and a police officer I hadn’t seen before waiting for me at the door.

  ‘Alex, this is Senior Constable Rivers,’ said Budi. ‘He’d like to ask you some questions about Elena, if that’s okay. I’ll stay with you while he interviews you – unless you’d prefer to have one of the other staff members sit with you?’

  ‘No … I mean, I’m happy for you to be the one with me,’ I said.

  We squeezed into Budi’s cubicle and sat down.

  ‘I just need to know a little bit about what you’ve seen around the office here, Alex,’ said Rivers, giving me a reassuring smile. He was a short man, with dark hair and a curiously flat nose. I wondered if he’d broken it in the line of duty, or whether it was just that his Virk Suit mask was on too tight. ‘Firstly: do you recall spending any time with Ms Mariposa – Elena – on Tuesday?’

  I thought hard. So much had happened that day.

  ‘Yes,’ I said after a moment. ‘She came to check on me and Dale, the other work experience student, late that morning. It might have been eleven or eleven-thirty.’

  ‘But you didn’t see her in the afternoon?’

  I shook my head.

  Budi gave a sigh. The Senior Constable looked at him.

  ‘Sorry,’ Budi said quickly. I could see little creases around his eyes. He looked worried.

  ‘And how would you describe Ms Mariposa’s behaviour, over the time you’ve known her?’ continued Rivers.

 
; ‘Well, she’s very … caring,’ I said. ‘She’s always checking how we’re going and things like that.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t describe her as an angry person – or very worried, perhaps?’

  ‘No!’ I paused. ‘I mean, I suppose she worries a bit about everyone being happy, maybe. And …’

  ‘Yes?’ Rivers leant forward in his seat.

  ‘Well …’ I gulped, stealing a glance at Budi, but his eyes were fixed on the cubicle wall. ‘The first time I met her, she was coming out of Mr Grody’s office. And she was crying.’

  The Senior Constable raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She said …’ Suddenly I felt horrible saying this. How incriminating would it look? Extremely, if I was any judge. But the damage was already done. ‘She said Mr Grody had told her she was useless, and that he might fire her.’

  Rivers’s second eyebrow came up to meet its partner. He scribbled something on a sheet of virtual paper in front of him.

  ‘But she wasn’t mad at him or anything,’ I went on, knowing I sounded like an idiot. ‘I never heard her say anything bad about him. Or anyone, actually.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Rivers, but I knew he was just being kind to me. ‘And is there anything else you can think of that might be useful to us? Anything at all?’

  I stared down at my hands.

  ‘I don’t want to frighten you, Alex,’ said Rivers gently after a moment, ‘but I do need you to remember something: your name is still on the suspect list. Now, none of us think you had anything to do with Mr Grody’s death … but the more information we have, the sooner we can clear all this up and officially take you off that list.’

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘This morning,’ I said, ‘I asked Elena what the weather was like where she lived, in Colombia. And she didn’t know.’

  There was a short silence. Rivers noted down my words on his paper.

  ‘All right. I think that’s everything we need for now. Thank you very much for your help, Alex.’ He nodded at Budi, and got up.

  ‘Budi? What’s happened to Elena?’ I asked, as Rivers stepped into Kamil’s cubicle and sat down to interview him. ‘Have they taken her away?’

  Budi shook his head.

  ‘They’re questioning her in the Conference Room. They let Maru from the Legal Department go in for a while – Elena said she didn’t have a lawyer – and he said the police can’t find her in realspace.’

  I stared.

  ‘Can’t find her in realspace? But it’s been nearly two days since Mr Grody died! Why did they let her out of the office if no one had checked where she really was?’

  ‘It seems,’ said Budi, ‘that there’s been a bit of an international stuff-up. And when the police techies went through the system yesterday, they discovered there is no Virk Room anywhere in Colombia. They checked back, and it turns out the Elena Sofia Mariposa the Colombians spoke to works as a receptionist in one of Simulcorp’s research divisions, which is all realspace. The fact that they have the same name seems to be mere coincidence.’

  ‘Oh, man.’ I put my head into my hands. ‘And I told them about Grody terrorising her!’

  Budi put a hand on my shoulder, ducking his head to look into my eyes.

  ‘Alex! You did the right thing. You told the truth – it’s up to them to decide what it means. Yes, it sounds horribly incriminating, but there must be a good explanation for all this.’ He looked pained. ‘I know Elena. Oh, something weird is going on with her, that’s for sure. Maru said she’d been telling the police stuff that didn’t add up: a home address that can’t be found, the names of the streets she walks down to get to her non-existent Virk Room, all sorts of things. But I don’t think whatever she’s hiding is murder.’ He frowned, rubbing his chin in thought. ‘I’d been hoping you might have seen her around the time Grody was killed. No one else seems to have, but I kept thinking the police would find some evidence that she was doing other things – maybe preparing some documents they could trace or something.’ Suddenly he leapt out of his seat. ‘Dale!’

  Dale, who had just come into the open space area, hurried over.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dale, did you see Elena at any time on Tuesday? After she checked on you and Alex around eleven, I mean?’

  ‘No. That policeman asked me about it, but I didn’t have anything to tell him. I’m sorry.’ He really looked it, too. But he still took a moment to give me one of his heart-melting smiles. I grinned shyly back at him. ‘Inge took me to visit the Legal Department right after that.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Budi’s brow furrowed. ‘But Inge was back before lunch, as I recall. She showed me that fascinating article on the return of culottes.’ He shuddered. ‘Were you working in here at that point? You might have seen Elena go by and forgotten about it.’

  And there it was: a flicker of fear on Dale’s handsome face.

  ‘I … no, I stayed on in the Legal Department a bit longer. I didn’t see Elena.’

  The heart-melting smile was gone, those blue eyes shifted away. I felt as if someone had kicked me in the chest.

  ‘I guess we’ll just have to hope someone else did, then,’ said Budi. ‘I’m going to see if anyone in CGI might have caught sight of her. You two will be okay to work on your Impression proposal by yourselves, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Dale.

  We watched Budi go. Then Dale turned to me, his confident expression back in place.

  ‘So, where did we get up to? We were planning the storyboard, right?’

  ‘I know where you were,’ I said hoarsely.

  Dale froze.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw you, Dale. Outside AU-3 at lunchtime on the day Grody was killed.’ I gulped. ‘I know you weren’t in your Virk Room in Woorenong all that time.’

  Once again I saw just how well the Virk Suit masks projected reality. Dale’s face turned the shiny, pale green hue of someone who had just broken into a cold sweat.

  ‘Alex,’ he breathed, looking around to check if anyone was listening, ‘you’ve got the wrong idea. I swear to you, I had nothing to do with Grody’s death. Nothing.’

  ‘You swear to me? I’m just supposed to accept that? I’ll bet you swore to the police that you were in AU-7 all day, didn’t you?’

  He flinched.

  ‘If you really had nothing to do with it, then why did you lie?’

  ‘I can’t explain, Alex.’ Dale’s fingers twitched as he steadied himself on the desk. ‘But surely you don’t believe I could murder someone?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I believe!’ Anger was drowning out the shock and hurt I’d felt at first. My voice rose as I pointed towards Grody’s wing of the office. ‘Elena is in that Conference Room being interrogated on suspicion of murder. If you know something about what happened to Grody – anything – you have to tell the police now!’

  ‘Shh!’ Dale put on a big, fake grin as Ricky and Li-Mei stared across at us from their cubicles. ‘I told you, Alex, I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Let’s leave that to the police to decide, shall we?’ I stood up, ready to march in and denounce him.

  ‘Oh God!’ Dale grabbed me by the wrist, his face white with desperation. ‘Please, Alex, look at me!’

  I couldn’t help it. I looked up into his eyes as he stood there, pinning my arm to his chest.

  ‘I’m sorry I lied,’ he whispered. ‘I was outside your Virk Room that lunchtime. I’d been using AU-4 that morning – no one else is in it at the moment – and I wanted to see you. The real you.’ He stared down at me like a man in a trance, and I struggled to keep the tears from rising in my eyes as I thought how much I’d wanted, only a few minutes ago, to be this close to him. ‘I logged out early so I’d have time to get to AU-3. But I really was talking to Frankie the whole time I was away from you at the party – you can ask her! There’s no way I could have killed Grody and got back to AU-7 before the police came. It’s the honest truth.’r />
  My head swam.

  ‘Then why are you afraid of me telling the police where you were?’

  Dale opened his mouth, then shut it again.

  ‘Just tell me this: do you know anything about what happened to Grody?’

  He didn’t say a word. But his face told me what I wanted to know.

  ‘You have to tell them, Dale. Whatever it is, they –’

  A sudden murmur from around the room alerted me to the fact that the door to Grody’s wing had just opened. The two police officers escorted Elena back into the room. Elena’s huge, dark eyes were cast down, her face expressionless. Inge, who had been nose to nose with Kamil and Jorge on the water couch, strutted over to them.

  ‘You are taking Elena away?’ she asked, putting her hands on her hips and standing rather threateningly in front of them, her stilettoed feet apart. ‘I don’t mean to question your authority, officers, but as the senior staff member present, I do need to know what is happening to my employees, yes?’

  ‘Actually, ma’am, your boss asked us to bring Ms Mariposa here,’ said the policeman. ‘Apparently some new evidence has come to light.’

  ‘My boss?’ Inge looked bewildered. ‘But Pierce is dead!’

  ‘The sergeant meant your other boss, Ms Wellenschnitter,’ said a soft voice behind her. A slight man with a thin, dark face and unusually bright eyes had just walked in.

  It was as if the whole room gasped at once.

  ‘Mr Chander!’ cried Inge, awestruck. Her usually rock-steady stance wavered for a moment, as though she was wondering whether to curtsey. ‘What an honour to have you here, sir!’

  The CEO waved her comment aside.

  ‘I should have been here two days ago,’ he said quietly. ‘My physician had suggested I take a few days’ holiday, so I didn’t hear of the unfortunate events until this morning. It seems I have a few issues to clear up.’

  ‘I’m so sorry if your vacation was interrupted, Mr Chander,’ purred Inge, who seemed to be recovering her poise. ‘You must have been looking forward to a well-deserved break.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said the CEO, with a small smile, ‘I never would have gone at all if my mother hadn’t agreed with my doctor. She told me it was ridiculous for a man in my position to go five years without a holiday. Eventually she threatened to come and live with me if I didn’t leave right away.’