Eric Brown - Kéthani

“Strange,” Singh said when he saw Standish. “Empty. Nothing, not even a pint of milk.”

Standish told him about the empty bathroom.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Singh said to himself.

“I might go over to the Onward Station and talk to the Director,” Standish said. “If you don’t mind my trespassing on your territory, that is?”

“Let’s share anything we come up with, okay?” Singh said. “God knows, I need all the help I can get.”

Standish took his leave of the farmhouse and motored across the moors to the looming monument of the alien Station. A new fall of snow had started, sifting down from a slate-grey sky. He found himself trailing a gritter for half a mile, delaying his arrival.

He thought about Sarah Roberts, her existence as pristine as the surrounding snow, and wondered if he would learn anything more from the Director.

Five minutes later he parked in the shadow of the Station and stepped through the sliding glass doors. The decor of the interior matched the arctic tone of the landscape outside. He’d only ever visited the Station once before, for the returning ceremony of a fellow policeman, and now he recalled the unearthly atmosphere of the place, the cool, quiet otherness of the white corridors and the spacious, minimally furnished rooms.

He showed his identification to a blue-uniformed receptionist and he was kept waiting for almost thirty minutes before the Director consented to see him.

The receptionist escorted him down a long white corridor, carpeted in pale blue, and left him in front of a white door. It slid open to reveal a stark room with a desk like an ice-table standing at the far end, before a floor to ceiling window that looked out over the frozen landscape.

The room seemed hardly more hospitable than the terrain outside.

A tall, attenuated man rose from behind the desk and gestured Standish to enter. Director Masters was in his fifties, severely thin and formal, as if his humanity had been leached by his involvement with such otherworldly matters as the resurrection of the dead.

They shook hands and Standish explained the reason for his visit.

“Ah,” Masters said. “The Roberts case. Terrible thing.”

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to ask a few questions about Ms. Roberts.”

“By all means. I’ll assist in any way possible.”

Standish began by asking what had been Sarah Roberts’s function at the Station.

Masters nodded. ”She was the Station’s liaison officer.”

“Which means?”

“She was the official who liaised between myself and my immediate superiors in Whitehall.”

“So technically she worked for the government?”

“That is so.”

“I presume you had daily contact with her?”

“I did.”

“And how did you find her? I mean, what kind of person would you say she was?”

Masters eased himself back in his seat. “To be honest, I found Ms. Roberts a hard person to get to know. There was the age difference, of course. But even so, she was very withdrawn and reserved. Other members of my staff thought the same.”

“She didn’t socialise with anyone from the Station?”

Masters smiled. “She wasn’t the kind of person to, ah… socialise.”

“University educated?”

“Oxford.”

Standish nodded. He was forming a picture of Roberts that in all likelihood was nothing like the person she had been. No doubt somewhere there was a mother and father, perhaps even a lover.

“Were you aware of anyone who might harbour a grudge or resentment against Ms. Roberts?”

“Absolutely not. She hardly interacted with anyone in any way that might have caused resentment or suchlike.”

“Do you by any chance have a personnel dossier on Ms. Roberts?”

Masters hesitated, then nodded. He leaned towards a microphone. “Danielle, could you bring in the Sarah Roberts file, please?”

Two minutes later Standish was leafing through a brief, very brief, document which listed Roberts’s other postings at Onward Stations around the country, and little else. There was no mention of her work before she joined the Ministry of Kéthani Affairs, nothing about her background or education.

But there was a photograph. It showed a fey, fair, beautiful woman in her early twenties, and Standish found it haunting.

He pulled the picture from its clip and asked Masters, “I don’t suppose I could keep this?”

“I’ll get Danielle to make a copy,” Masters said, and called his secretary again.

For the next ten minutes, before Director Masters rather unsubtly glanced at his watch to suggest that time was pressing, Standish questioned the Director about Roberts’s work. He learned that she collected data about the day-to-day running of the Station, the processing of the dead from the area, and passed the information on to a government department in London. Masters could tell him no more than that, or was unwilling to do so.

Standish thanked the director and left the Station. He sat in his Renault for ten minutes in contemplative silence, staring at the stark magnificence of the alien architecture, before starting the car and driving into Bradley.

He spent the afternoon in his office, processing what in the old days would have been called paperwork. He took time out to look up the identity of his wife’s lover, then finished his shift at six.

That night he ate a steak and kidney pie in the Dog and Gun, drank more than was healthy, and at closing time was sitting by himself next to the open fire and staring at the photograph of the dead woman.

She reminded him of… what was the name of the Elf Queen from that old film, The Lord of the Rings ? Anyway, she looked like the Elf Queen.

Serene and fey and… innocent?

He replaced the photograph in his breast pocket and left the pub. Electing to leave the car, he walked unsteadily along a lane made treacherous by black ice. It was after midnight when he arrived home. Thankfully Amanda was already in bed.

He slept in the guest room again, and awoke only when the bright white light from the Onward Station reminded him of his destiny, and the dead woman who would never live again.

The following morning he slipped from the house before Amanda got up, drove into Bradley and began work. Around eleven, R.J. Singh looked into the office and they discussed the case. Standish recounted his meeting with Director Masters and both men agreed that they were getting nowhere fast.

He had a quick sandwich in the staff canteen and after lunch returned to the routine admin work. By four, his eyes were sore from staring at the computer screen. He was considering going down to the canteen for a coffee when his mobile rang.

It was Richard Lincoln.

“Richard, how can I help?”

“It’s about the Roberts affair,” Lincoln said. “It might not amount to much, but a friend thought he saw something in the area on the afternoon of the murder.”

“Where can I contact him?”

“Well, we’re meeting in the Fleece in Oxenworth tonight, around seven. Why don’t you come along?”

“I’ll do that. See you then. Thanks, Richard.”

He refuelled himself with that promised coffee and worked for a further couple of hours. Just after six he left the station and drove over the moors to Oxenworth, a tiny village of a dozen houses, two converted mills, a local store-cum-post office and a public house.

He arrived early and ordered scampi and chips from the bar menu. He was on his second pint when Richard Lincoln pushed through the swing door from the hallway, followed by a man and a woman in their forties.

Lincoln introduced the couple as Ben and Elisabeth Knightly; Ben was a dry-stone waller, Elisabeth a teacher at Bradley comprehensive. They had the appearance of newly-weds, Standish thought: they found each other’s hands beneath the table when they assumed no one was looking and established eye contact with each other with charming regularity.