Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Then the evening before Edward was killed, Nicky actually answered me back at supper. Me! Edward didn’t stop talking about it for the rest of the evening, he was simply over the moon. Then I went and ballsed it up by getting caught when I went and fetched Isabel out to play. Naughty me.”

“So Nicholas Beswick would have been on an emotional roller-coaster that night?”

Rosette’s eyes narrowed. “Oh no you don’t, Greg, darling. You’re not pinning that perverted atrocity on Nicky. He wouldn’t do that. Besides I was there when he came into the room and saw what had been done to Edward. He was in hysterics, worse than me. Go away and harass someone else, Greg. Not Nicky.”

“And how about you? Were you at all jealous that Kitchener was becoming involved with Isabel?”

“My, my,” she cooed. “And I thought I was a prime bitch. No, Greg, darling. I wasn’t jealous. But I am disappointed. In you, darling. I thought you would be able to see why not. You should do. If you’re any good, that is. Or is Mindstar like a rock star’s codpiece, pumped up with hot air?”

It was the tone which keyed him in. Greg concentrated on the shimmering thought currents in front of him, congealed with hauteur, and smug complacency. Something was helping her to recover from the anguish of Kitchener’s death, the shock scars of the psyche were healing too rapidly. When he went deeper, he found her cherishing a brittle triumph. Intuition kicked in. He refocused his espersense, moving it down through her body, feeling the grainy texture of warm cells, a fast surge of blood through veins like velvet pipes, obtuse chemical reactions flared and died all around, nerves flashed like lightning conductors. He left her brain behind, slipping past her throat, neck, breasts, chest, further down.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “You’re pregnant.” The embryo hung in the centre of black and scarlet shadows, a delicate white porcelain sculpture, beautiful, tiny, and tragically fragile.

“What?” Langley jerked upright.

“This interview is now over!” Slater cried.

Rosette slapped her hand against the desk as the detective and the lawyer started to shout at each other. “Not yet!” she yelled. “We haven’t finished yet.”

Slater bent over her urgently, plucking at the arm of her black jacket. “Miss Harding-Clarke, I must insist you do not continue.”

“No.” She waved him away. “You are afraid the child gives me a motive. That I can contest Edward’s will on behalf of the baby. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Slater glanced round at the detectives, his lips pressed together. “That is a likely argument for the prosecution, yes.”

“My family is richer than Edward. Money is irrelevant to me.”

“Please!” he implored her.

“Are we still being recorded?” she asked.

“Yes,” Nevin said.

Greg sat perfectly still. He could guess what was coming next. Like she said, she had an IQ well above average.

“Excellent. Now I’ve been sitting patiently in this squalid filthy little room, and opened my soul to one of the most experienced and highly trained psychics in the country. I haven’t held anything back, and I’ve answered every question put to me. Now, Greg darling, would you please tell everyone here whether I’ve been telling the truth.”

“You have,” he said, awash with the sense of inevitability.

“Did I kill Edward?”

“No.”

“Thank you!” She stood up. A grinning Sister rose behind her.

“Rosette?” Greg said.

She turned, exasperation on her face. “Now what?”

He pointed casually at the camera. “For the record, could you tell us which of the other students at Launde you slept with, please?”

Her fists clenched and unclenched, long red nails leaving white imprints on the flesh of her palms. “Cecil,” she said woodenly. “That’s all.”

“Thank you, Rosette. No more questions.”

“You used to be Rosette’s lover,” Greg said.

Cecil Cameron inclined his head reluctantly. “Yes. When she first came to Launde, last October. Talk about impact; we started screwing the day after she arrived.”

“How long did it last for?”

“About a month.”

“Why did it end?”

He shrugged expansively. “You’ve met Rosette. How long could you put up with her for?”

Greg heard Vernon chuckling softly behind him. Lisa Collier, who was acting as Cecil’s adviser, tapped on his arm, giving him a disapproving frown. “No opinions,” she murmured.

“I didn’t even get on with her to start with,” Greg said. “You obviously did.”

“For a while. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Rosette and me are still good mates. But she’s difficult to please. She thrives on variety, everything has to be fresh for her. Her tolerance threshold is non-existent. We burnt out. I knew it would right from the beginning. It was good while it lasted, mind. I mean, let’s face it, she can take her pick.”

“Did she pick Kitchener?”

“No. That was mutual attraction.”

“What were you doing on Thursday night after supper?”

“Working on a project of Kitchener’s; I was studying theoretical perturbations in electron orbits.”

“Were you interfacing with the Abbey’s Bendix lightware cruncher?”

“Yes. Why, you think I can do that kind of thing in my head?”

“What time did you stop using the Bendix?”

“About eleven o’clock.”

“Could you be more precise, please?”

“Five past, ten past, something like that.”

“Was it functioning normally when you were interfacing with it?”

“Yes.”

“Did you use the English Telecom datalink to access any ‘ware cores outside the Abbey that night?”

“No.”

“Did you use the datanet for anything that night?”

“No.”

“What did you do after you stopped work?”

“Rosette came in, that’s why I stopped. We had a drink and a talk. The other four were in Uri’s room. She doesn’t get on terribly well with Liz, and Nick isn’t exactly enthralling conversation at the best of times.”

“Do you like him?”

“Who, Nick? Yeah, I don’t mind him. He’s a bit shy, but he’s a sodding genius when it comes to physics. We all knew that.”

“How long was Rosette with you?”

“Until after midnight-quarter-past, half-past maybe. She went off to see Kitchener then.” He pulled an indignant face. “What a waste. Old man like that. Her choice, mind.”

“What about the other three students, how did you get on with them?”

“Fine. Uri and Liz had been involved for a year. Uri’s great, one of the lads. Liz too, come to that.”

“And what about Isabel?” Greg watched the conflicting emotional surges corrupt Cecil’s thought currents, the twinges of guilt coupled with an almost paternal urge of protectiveness. Cecil was being pulled apart by indecision.

“Nice girl. Bit disorientated by Abbey life, but she was coping.”

“Did you sleep with her?”

“Hey! I said we were friends.”

“Your relationship is something more than an ordinary friendship, though.”

Cecil looked round at Lisa Collier for guidance.

“It’s a legitimate question,” she said sourly.

“You can tell that from my mind?” Cecil asked apprehensively.

“Yeah.”

“OK. Well, I meant what I said, mind. We weren’t screwing each other. Wish we had been, she’s got a terrific body. I asked her often enough, but she wasn’t keen. She said that it couldn’t last, not with me leaving at the end of the year, so it would be pointless, she’d only wind up getting hurt. I might have managed to change her mind in the end. Still… I was happy enough playing big brother to her. There weren’t many others she could turn to. I mean all that New Age crap Kitchener spouted about liberating your mind. Christ. The longest chat-up routine ever written. He said anything that would get them into bed with him, and they did as well, two by two. Isabel was confused by it. So we talked, that’s all. Nick would have burst into tears if she’d told him what she was up to with Kitchener. As for Liz and Uri, hell, it’s a miracle if they get out of bed for a meal! And Rosette, well she was with Kitchener.”