Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“It’s been a good year for us so far,” Maria said. “Really, very good. There are a lot of our ewes pregnant, the lambs should fetch a good price in the spring. So, could we possibly pay you in instalments, please?”

Greg just wanted to curl up and die. “There’s no fee,” he managed to say.

Maria’s face stiffened. “We’re not asking for charity, Mr Mandel.”

“It isn’t charity,” Eleanor said quickly. We can’t accept a fee, not legally. You see, we’re still on the Home Office payroll for the Kitchener case, and we remain on it until the trial is complete. How we run the investigation is entirely at our discretion, that’s in the contract we signed.”

Maria looked as though she was about to protest, but Derek took her hand, squeezing a warning.

“Where are you staying?” Eleanor asked.

“I have to get home,” Derek said. “With the sheep, and all. But Maria’s got a room in a bed and breakfast house in Northgate Street, not far from the police station.”

“OK, we’ll be in touch.”

“What did you go and tell them that for? I can’t believe you said that!”

“Calm down,” Eleanor said.

“Calm down? That boy is a psychopathic killer, and you tell his parents we’re going to get him off?”

“You don’t think that.”

“Don’t think what?”

“That he did it,” she said patiently.

“I saw him flicking do it! And so did you!”

“That’s not what I said, Gregory. I said you don’t think he did it.”

“I…” He covered his face with his hands, massaging his temple. She was right. Eleanor was always bloody right, especially when it came to what went on in his mind. Bloody unfair, that was.

He gave her a reproachful smile. “How do you do that?”

“I had a good teacher.”

“What ambiguities were you talking about?”

“The fact that your espersense didn’t catch the guilt.”

“Psi isn’t perfect,” he said automatically.

Eleanor just looked at him.

“Yeah, all right. I couldn’t miss something that obvious. But we saw him do it, though.”

“We, or rather I, had a vision that he did it. That’s all.”

“A vision that was backed up by finding the knife, complete with fingerprints.”

“If Nicholas was framed, then of course physical evidence would be planted to corroborate the vision.”

“So how did you come to have the vision if it wasn’t what actually happened?”

“I don’t know. Another type of psychic who can make the images seem real? A fantasyscape artist? You tell me. You’re the expert.”

“I never heard of any psi ability remotely like that back in Mindstar, not even rumours. The nearest would be eidolonics, but no eidopath could work up an image like that.”

“You hadn’t heard of a retrospection neurohormone until last Wednesday.”

“No, Eleanor. I just don’t believe it. It’s too complicated. The killer tried to obliterate all trace of the retrospection neurohormone, remember? He never intended for anyone to use it. So there was no way he would have some psychic on permanent standby in case we infused it to see what happened that night. Besides, I would have sensed another psychic operating at Launde, and don’t forget Nicholas saw you. That’s the real clincher. He actually confirms you went back there to witness the murder. And every event we observed that night matches the statements which the students gave.”

“Everything except the murder.”

“If everything else was kosher, why should the murder be any different?”

“So you do think Nicholas killed Kitchener?”

Greg thought about it, all the doubts and internal tension that had been twisting him up for the last few days. His intuition was the root, strong enough to keep goading against all logic; like a rash developing in his synapses, an itch you just couldn’t scratch. Superstition, people called it. So what it boiled down to was did he believe in his ability? In himself? “Oh, shit.” He took a breath. “No, I don’t think Nicholas did it. I know he didn’t. But how the actual murderer pulled that stunt with him and the knife…”

“Come on, Gregory, never mind the details; start thinking. Assume you are right and Nicholas is innocent, what do we do next?”

“Prove he was framed. Find the real killer.”

“See? Simple.”

“Thank you. Do you have any equally impressive suggestions how we go about it?”

She gave him a pensive look, tapping a forefinger on her teeth. “The first thing to do is find out if someone else had a motive to kill Kitchener. Once we know who, we can start to work out how they pulled it off. What does your intuition say?”

“Good question.”

He ordered a small neurohormone secretion, and reached inwards, down into that pool of silent solitude at the core of his own mind, rooting round for convictions. The only time his intuition had tweaked him during the case was when he saw the three little fish lakes at Launde. Which he had then gone on to conveniently forget about once Eleanor had infused the retrospection neurohormone. The lakes, they were the reason he doubted Nicholas’s guilt.

But why?

Greg switched the flatscreen in the lounge to phone function as he relaxed back into the settee. He flicked through the notes stored in his cybofax until he found the number for Stocken Hall, and squirted it at the flatscreen’s ‘ware. A secretary answered and tried to fob him off when he asked for James MacLennan, so he did his conjuring trick with his cover-all Home Office authority again.

“You’re getting to be a real bully with that,” Eleanor observed. She was sitting in a chair opposite the settee, out of the flatscreen camera’s pick-up field.

“Yeah; feels pretty good, too.” He spread his arms out along the back of the settee with a gratuitous sigh.

She gave him a derisory sneer in return.

Stocken Hall’s director appeared on the flatscreen, sitting behind his desk, wearing a smart blue suit. The picture window’s blinds were closed, as before.

“Mr Mandel, I believe congratulations are in order.” A warm regular smile displayed perfect teeth.

“The police have a suspect in custody, yeah.”

“Excellent news. Perhaps the media will now leave us all alone.”

“Don’t bet your life on it.”

“No. Quite. How may I help you? My secretary said you were calling on urgent Home Office business.”

“Tell you, I need some information on the way the human brain works, specifically in your field: memories. That suspect, Nicholas Beswick, he actually managed to fool me. Now he’s the very first person ever to have done that. As you can imagine, that makes me a little nervous.”

“Indeed. By fooling you, do you mean your empathic sense?”

“Yeah. He said he didn’t do it and I believed him. You see, there was no evasion, no duplicity. Any mention of that murder should have triggered his memory of the event, and with it all the usual associated feelings of guilt and remorse. But I didn’t sense a single suggestion of iniquity or deception. His mind appeared utterly normal, nothing at all like that cracked monster Liam Bursken.”

“I see. It does seem somewhat strange.”

“What I wanted to know was: is it possible he could deliberately make himself forget? I mean, even subconsciously; just wipe the murder from his brain? Beswick is still claiming he hasn’t done it, even though the evidence is pretty conclusive. I remembered you mentioned some kind of drug which would cause forgetfulness.”

MacLennan’s smile downgraded to serious concern. “Scopolamine. Yes. It’s a common enough substance, extracted from plants. Normally it’s employed as a mild sedative, and for travel sickness. And it has been used for ritual purposes for several centuries. But large doses can be used to induce what amounts to a trance state. There have been many cases of scopolamine intoxication identified, especially in Latin America. It was quite a problem with criminal gangs around the turn of the century. If you mix it with a tranquilizer it can be used to render someone completely docile. And it can be administered with a simple spray. Under its influence people would hand over their valuables, even empty their bank accounts from cash dispensers, and then have no recollection of ever doing so. It went out of fashion when the cashless society became firmly established, of course. Money transfers can be traced too easily these days.”