Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

She ran a band back through her hair, giving him a flustered glance. “Nicholas, we’ll get all that sorted out later. Do you know why you’re here?”

“Where are we?”

She groaned, shooting Langley an evil stare. “Christ. All right, now, this is the magistrates’ court, Nicholas. They’ve convened a special sitting. The police want you remanded in their custody for seventy-two hours so they can question you. You haven’t officially been charged with anything yet, all right? There is no basis for me opposing the application. Do you understand?”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Nicholas! Pay attention. We’re not entering pleas today. They’ll just remand you in custody and take you back to the Station. There will be a lawyer present at every interview. Now do you want me to continue as your lawyer?”

“Yes, yes please.”

“All right, now look, we’re going right in. You won’t have to say anything, just confirm your name when the clerk of the court asks. Got that?”

“Yes. My name.”

“Fine. Now look, there’s no way I could have the press excluded, so it’s a bit of a circus in there. But they’re not allowed to take pictures in an English court, thank God. Do your best just to ignore them.” She looked him up and down, then rounded on Langley. “There’s no bloody excuse for him turning up in this state. It amounts to intimidation in my book.”

Langley tweaked his tie. He was wearing a neat grey suit. “Sorry, we were a bit rushed for time back there. Won’t happen again.”

“You’re damn right it won’t,” she said in disgust.

The ancient hall was so bizarre that Nicholas was convinced he’d fallen into some Alice in Wonderland nightmare. There were six thick stone pillars supporting a high vaulted ceiling; each whitewashed wall was covered in horseshoes of all sizes, ranging from the genuine article up to elaborate gilded arches a metre and a half high. Most of them had crowns on top, all were inscribed with the names of the nobles, dignitaries, and royalty who had presented them to the county.

The court itself only took up the front half of the hall, an enclosure of tacky wooden pew benches painted a light grey, a defendant’s box at the back. Behind that was an open space about twenty metres square.

When he walked out of a small door in the front wall, handcuffed to Jon Nevin, he nearly faltered. There were about a hundred reporters. packed on to the rear floorspace. Every one of them was staring at him.

He was led to the box facing the magistrates’ bench, ever conscious of those greedy eyes boring into the back of his neck. The proceedings were short, formularized. He remembered to acknowledge the clerk, then all he had to do was listen to the police lawyer read his request from a cybofax.

Flowery legal language, grotesquely arcane. Why did the world stick to these rituals?

His lawyer was on her feet, saying something. Nicholas could hear the shuffling feet behind him, smothered coughs, gentle persistent clicking of fingers on cybofax keys. He could feel the curiosity they radiated, a silent demand to know, as though they had more right than the police and the lawyers.

“Granted,” said the chief magistrate, a middle-aged woman from the same stout mould as Lisa Collier.

The officials on the pew benches were standing up, talking together in low tones.

“Come on,” Nevin said.

Nicholas got to his feet, and halted. The reporters held still, collectively silent, expectant. Nevin was tugging insistently at his arm, equally uncomfortable at being in the limelight.

“I didn’t do it,” Nicholas said. They would listen, at least. Nobody else did. “I didn’t.”

There was no answer.

He was frogmarched out by Nevin and two uniformed constables.

The ignominious blanket, the car ride. He could hear rain pounding on the streets.

The cell. Confinement, keeping the monster behind bars, protecting the public from his savagery. Old men could sleep safer in their beds now. This time the walls were closer together, the ceiling lower. At night they closed around his body, embedding him in cold black marble.

Rosette was a natural channel star, the graceful curves of her face bewitching the camera, promoting her regality, betraying no sign of her contumacy. She was standing on the pavement outside Oakham police station, beside a long modern navyblue Aston Martin driven by a chauffeur. The front passenger door was open and she held herself poised to enter, doing the reporters a big favour by indulging them. The sunlight caught her fair hair to perfection as it fell on the shoulders of her leaf-green jacket.

“The baby is due in seven months,” she said. “I expect to have it in a London clinic. But it will definitely be born in England, Edward would have wanted that. He was a great nationalist.”

The baby was news to Nicholas. He accepted the fact numbly. There ought to have been some tiny part of him which was glad, but he couldn’t find it. Was that the kind of cyborg mind which enabled people to butcher their murder victims? But if he was so insensitive, why had he fallen in love with Isabel? It was most puzzling, his mind.

“How long had you and Kitchener been having an affair?” a reporter asked.

“I think I fell in love with Edward when I was eight years old. I remember seeing him on a channel science ‘cast. He was so impassioned about his subject, and yet he always allowed his sense of humour to shine through. He was so much more alive than any other person. It was after that I concentrated on science subjects at school. He remained in my thoughts, an unsung mentor, an inspiration. Being invited to study at Launde Abbey was a lifetime ambition.”

“He was a lot older than you, did that pose any difficulty, some tension?”

“His mind was fresher than anybody’s on this planet.”

“Do you know what he was working on when he was killed?”

“A stardrive, darling. A faster than light stardrive. Edward was going to give us the galaxy. He believed in human destiny, you see. It was to be his gift to all the peoples of the world, so none of us would ever be restricted and oppressed again. We could spread our wings and truly blossom amid the splendour of the night.”

“It wasn’t a stardrive,” Nicholas said to the cell’s flatscreen. Typical Rosette to go for theatrical effect.

“A working stardrive?” Even the reporter was sceptical.

“Oh, yes. He was studying the loopholes allowed for in General Relativity. With his genius and Event Horizon’s money, I genuinely believe a starship could have been built. Now, though, who knows.” Her face was haunted by poignancy. “I have a dream that one day our child will take up the banner of his father’s work, and bring us that liberation Edward sought. Perhaps it is only an exiguous hope, but I believe, after all this, that it is a hope to which I am entitled.”

“How do you feel about the murder?”

“Grief, nothing but unending black grief. The other students have all been tremendously kind and supportive, we’ve cried together, and we’ve laughed about the good times Edward gave us. You see, darling, he would have scolded us terribly if we hadn’t laughed. It’s the way he was. So alive, a celebration of life.”

“And what about Nicholas Beswick?”

Rosette came right out of the flatscreen to stand in the cell beside him. A tall, glorious Venus; a goddess wronged and brutally vengeful. “I hope he is raped by every demon in hell.”

Nicholas turned over, shuddering, and buried his head under the blanket.

He must have fallen asleep, because Lisa Collier was shaking him, her face anxious. “Are you all right?”

He blinked against the pink-white light of the biolum panel directly overhead. “Yes. Fine, thank you.”