Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

A police sergeant she didn’t recognize was climbing out of the EMC Ranger, screwing his cap ceremoniously into place.

“We only just got here,” said Greg. He introduced the sergeant as Keith Willet.

The house’s iron-bound front door opened. Colin Mellor stood inside, leaning on a wooden walking stick; a seventy-two-year-old with bushy white hair, wearing baggy green corduroy trousers and a mauve cardigan. A huge Alsatian nosed round his legs, staring at the visitors. Eleanor shuddered slightly at the sight of the animal. It was a gene-tailored guard hound; grey-furred, muscles sculpted for speed, supposedly owner-obedient. That was a trait which the geneticists didn’t always succeed in splicing together correctly. Greg had told her that when the original military combat hounds were taken into the field some of them had turned on their handlers.

And she’d seen first-hand what the modified beasts could do to people. It had been a gene-tailored sentinel panther which attacked Suzi.

“It’s friends, look, Sparky,” Colin said, patting the dog’s head. “They’re all friends.” The dog gazed round at them with big cat-iris eyes, and blinked lazily. It looked back up at Colin. Reluctantly, Eleanor thought. She could see Joey Foulkes all tensed up, hand hovering near the give-away bulge under his suit jacket.

“Well, come in,” said Colin. The stick was shaken vigorously for emphasis. “Sparky’s smelt you all now. He likes you.” He backed into the hall, shooing the dog out of the way.

Eleanor found Greg’s hand and held him tightly as they went inside.

Colin led them into his lounge. It was on the ground floor, furnished in plain teak, the upholstery a light green; big french windows gave him a view out across the meadow. Biolum globes in smoked-glass pendant shades cast a strong light. There were pictures of battle scenes on every wall; the army from the Napoleonic wars right up to Turkey.

“Before anything else,” Eleanor said to Greg, “I’ve got some bad news for you. The Stamford and Rutland Mercury, the Rutland Times, and the Melton Times all had their memory cores crashed by the hotrods. The circuit said they were too sympathetic to the PSP. So there’s no record of any incident at Launde Abbey.”

Greg clamped a hand on each forearm, and kissed her warmly. “The hotrods crashed the coroner’s office as well,” he said. The pleased tone confused her momentarily.

Colin eased himself delicately into a manor wing chair.

Eleanor hadn’t seen him since the wedding last year, and even then she’d only had a few words. She thought he looked a lot frailer.

“Now then, Greg,” Colin said. “What’s all this about?”

Eleanor listened to Greg summarizing the case. Somehow she couldn’t draw much comfort from the enigma surrounding Clarissa Wynne’s death. Greg’s intuition had been right. As usual. But the entire sequence of events was becoming equivocal, shaded in a formless grey murk seeping out of the hinterlands, eroding facts before her eyes. It was sadly depressing.

Greg was in his element, of course. And Gabriel, although to a lesser degree.

Right at the centre of her mind was a tired little girl who wanted to say: ‘I saw Nicholas do it. That’s an end. Let’s leave it.’ Why do adults always have to be so bloody noble and resolute?

“Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to erase every trace of Clarissa Wynne,” Greg said. “Not to mention expense. Hotrods don’t come cheap, and they’ve burnt three newspapers plus a coroner’s office; maybe Oakham police station was part of it, maybe not. But the fact remains, every last hard byte on the girl has gone. All we’re left with is personal memories. And precious few of them.”

“What about the international news libraries?” Colin asked. “I checked with Julia,” Greg said. “They all have files on Kitchener, of course. None of them mention Clarissa Wynne. It was a local matter, and as far as anyone knew an accidental death. Not important enough. Although Globecast’s Pan-Europe news and current affairs office think there might have been some kind of hotrod burn against their memory cores. Several file codes relating to that period were scrambled. But they can’t actually find anything missing, so there’s no way of proving it.”

“I doubt they could help anyway,” Eleanor said. “If there had been any suspicion that Kitchener was implicated in that girl’s death, it would have been headline news the world over. I’d say the PSP’s cover-up worked pretty well.”

“Yeah,” Greg admitted.

“Which is where I come in,” Colin said. There was a cheerful smile on his pale face.

Eleanor had the notion he was terribly grateful to be asked. Eager to show he could still pull his weight, not let the side down. Except it was so painfully obvious his health was decaying rapidly. His heart, she guessed.

“If you could,” Greg said. He flashed her a shamefaced look. “There’s no better tracker.”

“Certainly can,” Colin said proudly. “The map room’s down the corridor.” He pressed both hands against the chair, struggling to rise. Joey Foulkes came forward to help him, but he shook off the young hardliner with exaggerated self-reliance.

The map room was a plain white cube, three metres to a side, windowless. It put Eleanor in mind of Kitchener’s computer room. Sparky wasn’t allowed in.

The biolum panels came on to show a circular flatscreen mounted on one wall. There was a single ‘ware module on the floor in a corner.

Colin gave a voice command to the ‘ware, and a map of England appeared on the flatscreen. He stood in front of it, both hands pressed on the bulb of his stick, and looked the outline up and down, nodding in satisfaction. “It’s there, Greg, I can still do it, by God!” His voice was a weak growl.

“That’s why I came,” Greg said. “Nobody else in your class.”

She could detect a tremor in his voice. When she looked his eyes were dark with pain. She fumbled for his hand.

“Talk to me, young Keith,” Colin said.

Willet twitched uncomfortably. “What about, sir?”

“This dreadful Maurice Knebel chap, of course. I need your mind’s image of him to work on.”

“Sir?”

“Tell us about an incident you remember,” Greg said. “A station cricket match where he got caught out. What did he wear? Bad habits, good habits. What sort of food did he eat? Who were his friends?”

“Yes, sir. Well, there was one suit which he always wore, this would be around the time of the Wynne girl’s death I suppose. Brown and grey, check, it was. Used to get some stick about it.”

Eleanor filtered out what the sergeant was saying. It was almost unfair to make someone so stolid and reliable relate trivial tales from the past.

Colin had become preternaturally still. His stare had developed that distance of all gland users, seeing at ninety degrees to the real universe.

The old man had been a major in an English army infantry regiment at the time when the Mindstar Brigade was being formed. He was fifty-five and due for imminent retirement when the blanket service psi-assessment tests gave him the excuse he needed to extend his beloved commission. Mind-star hadn’t intended to take anyone his age, but his farsight rating was one of the highest they recorded. Fortunately his ESP faculty had almost developed as it was intended.

Willet was droning on about Maurice Knebel and his fondness for Indian food when Colin leant forwards and deftly pressed his open palm against the flatscreen. The map image shifted instantly, expanding the area around his hand. It was centred on Peterborough, she noticed with a start. The vivid featureless turquoise of the Fens Basin had bitten into a third of the screen.