Roll Call

by Malcolm Rose

  He laughed. “No. No time, no inclination.”

  “Have you been to see her in Bristol?”

  “No,” Robert answered. “Look. Is this about me or my sister?”

  “Both. Have you ever done the biography of a notorious criminal?”

  “I’d like to, but it’s access to information that’s the big problem. Someone like you could help me out. Unless you just work on crimes against literature – like arresting whoever wrote that myth you mentioned.”

  Luke did not react to the joke. “Who are you working on right now?”

  “I’m just finishing Jed Lester.”

  “The middle-distance runner. Where’s he now?”

  “Well, that’s one of the great things about him. He could be somewhere plush like Manchester or Leeds, but he’s gone to Milton Keynes to help train kids. He thinks he’ll have a greater impact there than in the north. Emily says she’s in Bristol for the same reason.”

  “Didn’t Jed Lester come through Dundee School?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly, Luke was keen to finish the interview and instead get information on Robert Wonder from his contacts. That way, he’d have more faith in the answers. Besides, Jed Lester had always been one of Luke’s heroes so he relished an excuse to meet him. “Thanks,” he said to Robert. “That’s all. I’ll let you crack on with the biography. I’ll read it when you post it on-line.” With the telescreen link broken, Luke turned to Malc and said, “Milton Keynes. Interesting. That’s within spitting distance of Woburn.”

  “I dispute that claim. Even with a strong following wind, the human...”

  “All right. But if Robert went to Milton Keynes to interview Jed Lester and researched his background in Dundee, that puts him near two of the murder scenes. Come on. It won’t take long to go back to Milton Keynes. Get your skates on.”

  “I do not...”

  “I wish I could program you to understand teasing.”

  ****

  Jed stood, hands on hips, watching four of his young stars rushing away from the track. He shouted after them, “You never run that fast for me!” His breath steamed in the cold air.

  “My fault,” Luke said, holding out his card, identifying him as FI Harding. “I have that effect on certain kids.”

  “You haven’t come to arrest them, have you? No. Obviously not, or you’d be charging after them. You wouldn’t stand a chance of...” He stood back and examined Luke’s long legs and his physique. “I don’t know, though. You look in pretty good shape. Run a couple of laps with me.”

  Luke glanced down. “I haven’t got the shoes for it.”

  “Excuses!” Jed muttered. “I’m not the age for it any more, but I don’t go on about it.” He took off down one of the lanes.

  Luke smiled and jogged after him.

  Even in his forties, Jed ran like a dream. He seemed to float above the surface of the track. He watched Luke beside him for two hundred metres and then said, “You run easy. You’re missing your career.”

  “I always enjoyed athletics – and lots of sports.”

  Jed nodded his trademark bald head, streamlined for speed. “I can tell.”

  Luke’s hair streamed out behind him. “Your fifteen-hundred metres record has stood for years. That’s brilliant.”

  “It’ll go one day. That’s why winning races is what this game’s all about. Records don’t last but no one can take trophies away from you.” As they rounded the bend, Jed said, “You didn’t come to get some running practice and hints – or you’d have a tracksuit and trainers. So, what do you want?”

  They were making ground on a group of ten children bunched on the straight in front of them. In a roped-off lane, a thickset sprinter was practising her starts. Luke said, “I want to ask you about Robert Wonder.”

  “Ah. Him. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, write about it.” Jed chuckled to himself. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a nice fella. It’s just that, being pretty useless at everything, he lives through his subjects.”

  Luke realized that Jed was testing his strength, raising the pace steadily. Luke was not breathless yet, but the great gulps of cold air made his lungs ache. “Did he come and talk to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last month. Towards the end.”

  Luke lengthened his stride to keep in touch and eased up on the questions while they overtook the band of youngsters. When they moved back to the inside lane, he said, “I bet he looked you up at Dundee School as well.”

  “I believe so. Probably turned up all sorts of bad behaviour. He did that ages ago, when he first started.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Summer. In the middle of that drought.”

  “Do you have any connection with York?”

  Jed laughed. “Where do you think I laid down that fifteen-hundred record? York Races were always my favourite. Fast track.”

  “Do you know if Robert went there for more information?”

  “He said he wanted to talk to the race organizer.”

  Malc followed them round the track like a robotic telescreen camera, recording the conversation and the race. Luke was breathing more heavily now. But he was comforted to note that he wasn’t the only one. Jed opted for short and rapid gasps. “Just one more question. Is there a London connection?”

  Jed answered, “No. Never had much to do with the place. What’s he done, my biographer?”

  “Oh, probably nothing,” Luke replied.

  “Just don’t arrest him till he’s finished my story. It’d be a terrible waste if you put him away before he immortalized me on-line.” Then Jed said, “One more lap. If you finish within twenty metres of me, you’ve got to drop this silly FI business and take up running, probably eight hundred metres.”

  Luke laughed. “I can’t do that. But I’ll try and keep up with you.”

  As soon as Luke finished talking, Jed kicked for home.

  Making no attempt to hide his fatigue now, Luke took a deep breath and accelerated as much as his tired legs would allow. Normally, his pride would be dented by lagging behind a forty-five-year-old man, but this was Jed Lester. Luke didn’t mind that the retired champion had opened up a gap, especially because it didn’t get any bigger down the back straight. In the home stretch, Jed took a few more strides off him, but Luke wasn’t far behind when the famous athlete came to a halt.

  Luke pulled up next to Jed and a small group of onlookers clapped the two of them.

  Jed looked at Luke and said, “Not bad at all.”

  “What was that? About ten metres behind?”

  Malc interrupted. “Fourteen metres and twelve centimetres.”

  “No need to be so accurate and honest,” Luke muttered between breaths.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Malc had collected all of the available information on the families of EW1 to the missing EW4, but Luke could not find anything unusual in it. There were no curious deaths, no clear interest in family trees, and no significant diseases, apart from the wrong-way-round EW2. If there was a motive for murder lurking in the records, it lay hidden.

  One by one, the results of DNA tests on all Emily Wonders were trickling in. Each time a result was transmitted to Malc, he performed a kinship search and analysis. “The information technology instructor in Bristol and the opera singer do not share the same genetic markers as the victims. It is highly unlikely that they are related. So far, the only Emily Wonder who does have those markers is the Year-10 student taking criminology at Edinburgh School.”

  Luke nodded. “Could be the next victim, then. Request a couple of agents to protect her, Malc. And I’d better speak to her right now.”

  The unattractive girl was in her quarters rather than in a lesson because her lipodystrophy had got the better of her. Feeling under the weather, she was in a bad mood. After she’d listened to Luke, her temper did not improve. She exclaimed, “Bodyguards! What’s the point of that?”<
br />
  “I would’ve thought it was obvious. Three related deaths and you’re in the same family line. I’m not taking any chances with you...”

  “No one would dream of killing me, FI Harding. There’s no point. I don’t have long to live.”

  “That didn’t save a seventy-eight-year-old Emily Wonder in a nursing home.”

  Ignoring his remark, she said, “You’re not being straight with me.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “You’re not trying to protect me. You’ve got me marked down as a suspect. Your bodyguards’ll watch every move I make.”

  “I’ve got a list of suspects, yes. You know how it works. But I am trying to keep you safe.”

  “Huh.”

  Luke guessed that a few questions would not make her any more grouchy and uncooperative, so he pressed ahead. “Do you have a brother or a sister?”

  “I did have a sister.” She stressed the past tense with resentment in her voice.

  “I’m sorry... Did she have lipodystrophy as well?”

  “Yes. It’s very rare, the medics say, but we both inherited it. I think I’m the only one in the country now.”

  “Have you ever taken an interest in your family background?”

  Emily shook her head. “No.”

  “Do you know if your Biology Department up there has got a collection of marine life?”

  “This is Edinburgh School,” she snapped. “Of course it does. We’re big on oceans, ships, overseas trade, anything watery or fishy. Mr Garrett’s particularly keen on that sort of thing.”

  “Is he? Okay. Thanks. What does he like to do with his weekends?”

  “Why don’t you ask him? Good investigators don’t deal in hearsay. He gets away from school. That’s all I know.”

  “Fair enough. Watch out for your minders. They’ll turn up any time soon.”

  Irritated, Emily snorted noisily.

  ****

  Malc manoeuvred himself in front of Luke. “I cannot enter her comments about Instructor Clint Garrett into case notes because, as she stated, they are hearsay. However, you should regard him as a suspect.”

  “Agreed,” Luke replied. “EW1 was murdered on a Saturday and EW2 could well have been stabbed on Saturday 24th December. I wish I knew when Q planted the poisoned sauna stuff in York but, if I’m looking at a weekend killer, it might mean he can’t get away on workdays. Like an instructor.”

  “Clint Garrett has specialist knowledge of criminal investigations,” Malc pointed out.

  “Mmm. Sounds like he’s into marine creatures – so he’s bound to know about TTX – and we know he marked Tina Stone’s essay so he’s no stranger to the icicle idea. On top of that, in a sea of Emily Wonders, he’s male.”

  “You need to consider his motive.”

  “Emily’s his pet student. He’s obviously upset that genetics dealt her a rotten hand. That means, she was unlucky enough to be born with lipodystrophy. Maybe he’s showing related Emily Wonders – the ones who could’ve inherited it but didn’t – what it’s like to die early.” Luke shrugged. “If that’s right, there’s no point protecting her with agents. She wouldn’t be on his hit list. But I’m not risking it. I might be barking up the wrong tree again and she is a target.”

  Having entered the informal phrase into his dictionary, this time Malc did not object to Luke’s language.

  “There’s always Robert Wonder,” Luke continued. “I can put him at the site of all three murders and he’s familiar with TTX. He says he didn’t write Ice Cold but I can’t be sure about that. I don’t know about his motive, though. By the way, I can see a motive for Freya Lamacq and Barbara Backley – making their Emily unique – but I don’t know why they’d go for Emily Wonders in the same family tree. They’d want to track down and get rid of all her namesakes. It’s the same for anyone with celebrity worship syndrome. Anyway, there’s a huge problem with them both. It was a man who walked off with the London EW. That stops me putting an Emily Wonder on a list of realistic suspects.”

  “The man seen by the Greenwich witness may not have been Q.”

  “I know. But I don’t want to think about accomplices without some evidence that there is one. Most murders are solo performances.” Luke got to his feet and said, “I can’t just sit here thinking and waiting for EW4’s body to turn up. I need to get my teeth into some forensic evidence right now.”

  “Chewing crime-scene artefacts is not...”

  “Come on. Time for another river cruise.” Luke hesitated before asking, “That landslip in the Canaries hasn’t happened, has it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s safe, then. Well, as safe as Greenwich can be. On the way, I’ll have another dictionary definition for you – something to get your teeth into.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Walking from the wharf to the disused dome, built in a loop of the Thames, Luke was determined not to scare away the warehouse kids this time. He wanted to approach them without advertising himself as an FI, so he told Malc to stay out of sight.

  Malc objected. “It is dangerous for you to be without my protection in London.”

  “People like Owen Goode seem to stay in one piece without a mobile.”

  “Owen Goode has been shot and wounded, and Emily Wonder is not safe. In addition,” Malc said, “The Authorities require you to follow my advice. They do not approve of your unorthodox methods.”

  “Okay. Ask your circuits this, Malc. What’s happened every time you’ve come with me to meet kids living rough?”

  “They have run away.”

  Luke nodded. “Right. Now think how I’m going to get some more evidence on the missing girl. People shed ten thousand scraps of skin every minute so whoever took her has left some skin around here somewhere. No question. You could do DNA profiling on a single flake if only we could find it.”

  “Impractical. There will be millions of skin fragments from many different human beings.”

  “Exactly. Frustrating, isn’t it? But what’s the answer? I could narrow the search by speaking to Owen’s seven-year-old witness, but he’ll run away if you come with me.”

  “My programming cannot resolve this dilemma. Your logic is correct but I am under instruction to accompany you at all times on a case.”

  “Well, you’re just going to have to trust me. You hide out of the way. Keep a lookout on the entrance if it makes you happier.”

  “I do not experience...”

  “Yeah. I know. But have we got a deal?”

  “I can oversee your safety by keeping the approaches to the building under surveillance from a distance.”

  “Thanks, Malc. You’re a pal.”

  Luke could see a gang of about thirty children in the vast empty space of the warehouse. He could also see Owen refereeing a game of football. Owen was probably the only one of them who had a home address and an identity card. The others should have been in school. The play stopped for a moment when they noticed Luke but then a girl cried, “Corner!” and the game continued.

  In a hoarse voice, Owen shouted, “Carry on for a bit.” Then he walked off the improvised pitch towards Luke. “I... er... I came back. They’re an okay bunch of kids.”

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Owen glanced around and said, “No mobile. Have they sacked you?”

  Luke smiled. “Not yet. Is that seven-year-old around?”

  “Yes. Look. They put him in goal. Likely the worst keeper I’ve ever seen. Far too small.”

  “I need him for a minute. All right?”

  Owen coughed. “Won’t be a great loss to the team. I’ll go and get him, though. He trusts me.”

  The boy stood between Owen and Luke on the rough ground outside the old warehouse.

  “You know that man who went off with Emily?” Luke said, squatting down in front of him. “Are you sure it was a man?”

  The boy avoided Luke’s eyes and instead looked up at Owen with an unspoken question on his face.

  “As in
vestigators go,” Owen said with a smile, “this one’s okay.”

  “Yes. A man,” he answered.

  “Where did you see them?”

  “I was here.”

  “I mean, where were they?” Luke swept his arm in front of him, indicating the barren landscape from the Thames on his left, past the gaping mouth of the tunnel, the aggregates factory and the derelict building of Blackwall Detergents, to the Thames on his right.

  The young lad shut his eyes for a few seconds and then he pointed towards the concrete works. “They was there. They was walking to the river. That way.”

  “Thanks,” Luke replied. “That’s helpful. What was the man wearing?”

  The boy shrugged. “Don’t know, but he’d got a green scarf on.”

  “Was Emily carrying anything? Like a bag maybe.”

  He closed his eyes again and screwed up his face, apparently concentrating on a rerun of the scene in his mind. When he opened them, he said, “Yes.”

  “What sort of bag? What colour?”

  “Blue. A rucksack sort of thing.”

  Owen wiped his nose with a hand. “Likely she had a blanket.”

  Luke nodded. Speaking to the boy again, he said, “That’s great. I’m going to try and find her.”

  He pulled a face. “Are you going to put her in prison?”

  Luke smiled. “No. I’ll prove it to you.” He stood up and shouted for Malc. While the robot glided to his side, he touched the young lad’s arm kindly and said, “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble. You know a mobile can’t lie, don’t you?” Seeing him nod, Luke looked up at Malc and asked, “Am I trying to arrest Emily Wonder?”

  “No.”

  The boy flinched away from Malc but seemed satisfied that Luke was on the level.

  “I want to get her back here if I can – so she can carry on with her life. Right now, though, I want you back in goal. I hope your team hasn’t let any in because I dragged you away. Thanks.”

  The tiny goalkeeper did not need a second invitation. He turned and ran back inside as quickly as he could.

  “Good work,” Luke said to Owen, nodding towards the game inside.