Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

“Drink?” he said.

“No. Why have you picked me first?” she asked in a rather harsh voice.

“Well, I said to myself, if she’s the one who killed the Frog, mebbe she’ll try to seduce me to keep me quiet.”

The woman’s huge eyes opened even wider as she ran this through her mental translator to make sure she’d got it right. Then she threw back her head and laughed, no avian screech but a full-throated Carmen laugh, sensual, husky, sending tremors down her body like the inviting ripples on a jungle pool.

“Perhaps I will have that drink, Dalziel,” she said.

“Thought you might,” he said, handing her a glass.

She held it close to her breast so he had to lean over her to pour. She looked up at him and breathed, “Enough.” Her breath was honeyed, or more precisely spiced, as if she had been eating cinnamon and coriander. Such perfumes from a restaurant kitchen would have alarmed Dalziel, who liked his food plain dressed, but from the warm oven of this woman’s mouth, they were disturbingly appetitive, setting juices running he thought had long since dried to a trickle.

He sat down heavily and the frail chair spread its legs, but held.

“Cheers,” she said, lifting her glass to her lips.

“Cheers,” he answered. It was time to grasp the initiative.

“Look, love,” he said. “Cards on the table, that’s the way I work. God gave me a fair share of good Yorkshire common sense, and that tells me you’re about the least likely suspect of the lot, and that’s the real reason I picked you first. So I can get some answers I can be sure are honest.”

She said, “Thank you. I am flattered. But how do you work this out?”

“For a start, you weren’t on the module, were you? You stayed on Europa to look after the shop, you and the Eyetie. So while the module party all had plenty of reason to be mucking about with their TECs in the hold, you didn’t.”

“And this is when this interference was done, you think?”

“Has to be, hasn’t it?”

“I suppose. This fault in Emile’s suit, could it not be just a fault? That American tells us nothing, just makes hints.”

“No. It were deliberate interference, no doubt,” said Dalziel with the technological certainty of a man who used to repair police radios with his truncheon. “Must’ve been done in a hurry. I mean, given time, I expect you lot are all clued up enough to have covered your tracks.”

“Oh yes, I think so.” She regarded him thoughtfully. “So I am in the clear because I stay on the ship? Then Marco, who stayed with me, must be clear too?”

“That depends if his legs are as pretty as yours,” leered Dalziel. “But why do you ask? Would it surprise you if Marco was innocent?”

“No. I do not say that.”

“But he didn’t get on with Lemarque, is that it?”

“They were not good friends, no. But not so bad that he would kill!”

“How bad does that have to be for an Italian?” wondered Dalziel. “Why’d they not like each other? Rivals, were they? Or maybe they had a lovers’ tiff?”

He made a limp-wristed rocking gesture.

“What do you say?” she cried indignantly. “That is not possible!”

“No? Well, there’s things in these files as’d amaze you,” he said, patting the pile of folders on the floor next to him.

Puzzlement, irritation, and something else besides were chasing each other across that expressive face.

“You are mistaken, I think,” she said, recovering her poise. “They were rivals, yes. Each wanting to be the most macho, that is all.”

“You reckon? Mebbe they didn’t bother you much. I’ll be interested to hear what that Danish lass made of them. She’s a lot more boyish than you, might have turned them on a bit more...”

She looked ready to explode, recovered again and said, “Yes, if you are interested in low-temperature physics, go to her.”

“No, thanks. Me, I prefer the high-temperature Latin type,” he said lecherously.

She gave him a thin smile and said, “You talk a lot, Dalziel. Can you, I wonder — what is the phrase? — put your money where your mouth is?”

“Depends where you want me to put my mouth,” said Dalziel negligently. “Thanks for the offer, but. Mebbe later when I’ve a minute to spare, eh?” Or a week, he thought ruefully. Though there had been a time... At least his diversionary tactics had worked.

“Offer? What offer? You do not think...” Suddenly she broke into indignant Spanish.

Dalziel yawned and said, “Stick to English, luv. If a man’s worth swearing at, he’s worth swearing at in his own language. Now, I’ve read all the statements but I’m not much good at technical stuff, so mebbe you can give us a hand. First, these TECs, once they were activated in the module, you could monitor their circuits on Europa , is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And from Europa this info would go back to Earth Control?”

“Yes. There is nonstop transmission of pictures and technical data from Europa to Earth.”

“Aye,” scowled Dalziel. “Made me miss Star Trek. But weren’t there a transmission blackout from Europa as the module went down?”

“That is right. There was an electrical storm.”

He whistled and said, “That must have been scary.”

“No,” she said with professional indifference. “It happens often. Fortunately it did not last long and we got pictures back in time for the big event. Emile stepping onto the moon, I mean, not...”

She shuddered. A sympathetic smile lit Dalziel’s face like a wrecker’s lantern and he said, “Don’t take on, lass. Now, let’s see. It were just Europa ’s Earth transmissions that were affected? You still kept your contact with the module?”

“There was a little interference but we still got pictures.”

“And technical data on the TEC circuits?”

“Yes,” she snapped with the growing exasperation of the expert at being made to repeat the obvious. Dalziel scratched his nose. To him, such exasperation was the reddening skin above a boxer’s eye. You pounded at it till it split.

“And there was no sign of owt wrong with Lemarque’s suit? No hint that his circuits had been mucked around?”

“I have said so in my statement!” she cried. “There was nothing till the moment when he made water. Then pouf! it is finished. No one can say it was my fault! There were two of us watching. It was a systems malfunction I think, no one to blame. Who has been blaming me...?”

“Calm down, woman!” bellowed Dalziel. “You’ll be gabbling away in Spanish again just now, and then where will we be? Have another drink. That’s it, straight down. Now, get it into your noddle, nobody’s blaming you, least of all me. So, just a couple more questions...”

Pascoe and Dalziel had agreed to confer between interviews.

“Anything?” asked Pascoe.

“She’s been bonking either the Italian or the Frog or mebbe both, and she doesn’t much care for the Dane, so mebbe she got in on that act too. And she says that Albertosi and Lemarque didn’t much hit it off.”

“She volunteered all this?”

“I prodded a bit. And I said she weren’t on my list of suspects.”

“And isn’t she?”

“You know me, lad. You ’re on my list till I get the evidence to cross you off. She certainly had less chance than the others of fiddling with Lemarque’s suit. Mind you, she got very agitated when she thought I was hinting she were to blame for not monitoring the TEC transmissions properly. That electrical storm checked out, did it?”

“Happens all the time, evidently. And there were two of them doing the monitoring.”