Manhattan in Reverse (6 page)

The detective and the manager began a loud argument about the card game of the previous evening, whether it ever existed and who was taking part. Gareth Alan Pitchford was pressing hard for names, issuing threats of the city licensing board, and immediate arrest for the suspected withholding of information, in order to gain a degree of compliance.

I looked at the cleaning woman again, recalling one of my lectures at the investigatory course: a line about discovering all you need to know about people from what you find in their rubbish. She brushed the pile of dust she’d accrued into a tin pan, and walked out through a door at the back of the bar. I followed her, just in time to see her tip the pan into a large corrugated metal bin. She banged the lid down on top.

‘Is that where all the litter goes?’ I asked.

She gave me a surprised nod.

‘When was it emptied last?’

‘Two days ago,’ she grunted, clearly thinking I was mad.

I opened my attaché case, and pulled on some gloves. Fortunately the bin was only a quarter full. I rummaged round through the filthy debris it contained. It took me a while sifting through, but in among the cellophane wrappers, crumpled paper, mashed cigarette ends, shards of broken glass, soggy beer mats, and other repellent items, I found a well-chewed cigar butt. I sniffed tentatively at it. Not that I’m an expert, but to me it smelled very similar to the one which Antony Caesar Pitt had lit in the interview room. I dabbed at it with a forefinger. The mangled brown leaves were still damp.

I dropped the cigar into one of my plastic bags, and stripped my gloves off. When I returned to the club’s main room, Gareth Alan Pitchford was writing names into his notebook; whilst the manager wore the countenance of a badly frightened man.

‘We have them,’ the detective said in satisfaction. He snapped his notebook shut.

*

I took a train down to Southampton the following day. A car was waiting for me at the station. The drive out to the Raleigh family institute took about forty minutes.

Southampton is our city, in the same way Rome belongs to the Caesars, or London to the Percys. It might not sprawl on such grand scales, or boast a nucleus of Second Era architecture, but it’s well-ordered and impressive in its own right. With our family wealth coming from a long tradition of seafaring and merchanteering, we have built it into the second-largest commercial port in England. I could see large ships nuzzled up against the docks, their stacks churning out streamers of coal smoke as the cranes moved ponderously beside them, loading and unloading cargo. More ships were anchored offshore, awaiting cargo or refit. It had only been two years since I was last in Southampton, yet the number of big ocean-going passenger ships had visibly declined since then. Fewer settlers were being ferried over to the Americas, and even those members of families with established lands were being discouraged. I’d heard talk at the highest family councils that the overseas branches of the families were contemplating motions for greater autonomy. Their populations were rising faster than Europe’s, a basis to their claim for different considerations. I found it hard to believe they’d want to abandon their roots. But that was the kind of negotiation gestating behind the future’s horizon, one that would doubtless draw me in if I ever attained the levels I sought.

The Raleigh institute was situated several miles beyond the city boundaries, hugging the floor of a wide rolling valley. It’s the family’s oldest estate in England, established right at the start of the Second Era. We were among the first families out on the edge of the Empire’s hinterlands to practise the Sport of Emperors. The enormous prosperity and influence we have today can all be attributed to that early accommodation.

The institute valley is grassy parkland scattered with trees, extending right up over the top of the valley walls. At its heart are more than two dozen beautiful ancient stately manor houses encircling a long lake, their formal gardens merging together in a quilt of subtle greens. Even in March they retained a considerable elegance, their designers laying out tree and shrub varieties in order that swathes of colour straddled the land whatever the time of year.

Some of the manors have wings dating back over nine hundred years, though the intervening time has seen them accrue new structures at a bewildering rate until some have become almost like small villages huddled under a single multifaceted roof. Legend has it that when the last of the original manors was completed, at least twelve generations of Raleighs lived together in the valley. Some of the buildings are still lived in today – indeed, I grew up in one – but most have been converted to cater for the demands of the modern age, with administration and commerce becoming the newest and greediest residents. Stables and barns contain compartmentalized offices populated by secretaries, clerks, and managers. Libraries have undergone a transformation from literacy to numeracy, their leather-bound tomes of philosophy and history replaced by ledgers and records. Studies and drawing rooms have become conference rooms, while more than one chapel has become a council debating chamber. Awkley Manor itself, built in the early fourteen hundreds, has been converted into a single giant medical clinic, where the finest equipment which science and money can procure tends to the senior elders.

The car took me to the carved marble portico of Hewish Manor, which now hosted the family’s industrial science research faculty. I walked up the worn stone steps, halting at the top to take a look round. The lawns ahead of me swept down to the lake, where they were fringed with tall reeds. Weeping willows stood sentry along the shore, their denuded branches a lace-work of brown cracks across the white sky. As always a flock of swans glided over the black waters of the lake. The gardeners had planted a new avenue of oaks to the north of the building, running it from the lake right the way up the valley. It was the first new greenway for over a century. There were some fifty of them in the valley all told, from vigorous century-old palisades, to lines of intermittent aged trees, their corpulent trunks broken and rotting. They intersected each other in a great meandering pattern of random geometry, as if marking the roads of some imaginary city. When I was a child, my cousins and I ran and rode along those arboreal highways all summer long, playing our fantastical games and lingering over huge picnics.

My soft sigh was inevitable. More than anywhere, this was home to me, and not just because of a leisurely childhood. This place rooted us Raleighs.

The forensic department was downstairs in what used to be one of the wine vaults. The arching brick walls and ceiling had been cleaned and painted a uniform white, with utility tube lights running the length of every section. White-coated technicians sat quietly at long benches, working away on tests involving an inordinate amount of chemistry lab glassware.

Rebecca Raleigh Stothard, the family’s chief forensic scientist, came out of her office to greet me. Well into her second century, and a handsome woman, her chestnut hair was only just starting to lighten towards grey. She’d delivered an extensive series of lectures during my investigatory course, and my attendance had been absolute, not entirely due to what she was saying.

I was given a demure peck on the cheek, then she stepped back, still holding both of my hands, and looked me up and down. ‘You’re like a fine wine, Edward,’ she said teasingly. ‘Maturing nicely. One decade soon, I might just risk a taste.’

‘That much anticipation could prove fatal to a man.’

‘How’s Myriam?’

‘Fine.’

Her eyes flashed with amusement. ‘A father again. How devilsome you are. We never had boys like you in my time.’

‘Please. We’re still very much in your time.’

I’d forgotten how enjoyable it was to be in her company. She was so much more easy-going than dear old Francis. However, her humour faded after we sat down in her little office.

‘We received the last shipment of samples from the Oxford police this morning,’ she said. ‘I’ve allocated our best people to analyse them.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Has there been any progress?’

‘The police are doing their damnedest, but they’ve still got very little to go on at this point. That’s why I’m hoping your laboratory can come up with something for me, something they missed.’

‘Don’t place all your hopes on us. The Oxford police are good. We only found one additional fact that wasn’t in their laboratory report.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Carter Osborne Kenyon and Christine Jayne Lockett were imbibing a little more than wine and spirits that evening.’

‘Oh?’

‘They both had traces of cocaine in their blood. We ran the test twice, there’s no mistake.’

‘How much?’

‘Not enough for a drug-induced killing spree, if that’s what you’re thinking. They were simply having a decadent end to their evening. I gather she’s some sort of artist?’

‘Yes.’

‘Narcotic use is fairly common amongst the more Bohemian sects, and increasing.’

‘I see. Anything else?’

‘Not a thing.’

I put my attaché case on my knees, and flicked the locks back. ‘I may have something for you.’ I pulled the bag containing the cigar butt from its compartment. ‘I found this in the Westhay Club, I think it’s Antony Caesar Pitt’s. Is there any way you can tell me for sure?’

‘Pitt’s? I thought his alibi had been confirmed?’

‘The police interviewed three people, including the manager of the Westhay, who all swear he was in there playing cards with them.’

‘And you don’t believe them?’

‘I’ve been to the Westhay, I’ve seen the manager and the other players. They’re not the most reliable people in the world, and they were under a lot of pressure to confirm whether he was there or not. My problem is that if he was there that evening the police will thank them for their statement and their honesty and let them go. If he wasn’t, there could be consequences they’d rather avoid. I know that sounds somewhat paranoid, but he really is the only one of the friends who had anything like a motive. In his case, the proof has to be absolute. I’d be betraying my responsibility if I accepted anything less.’

She took the bag from me, and squinted at the remains of the cigar which it contained.

‘It was still damp with saliva the following morning,’ I told her. ‘If it is his, then I’m prepared to accept he was in that club.’

‘I’m sorry, Edward, we have no test that can produce those sort of results. I can’t even give you a blood type from a saliva sample.’

‘Damn!’

‘Not yet, but one of my people is already confident he can determine if someone has been drinking from a chemical reaction with their breath. It should deter those wretched cab drivers from having one over the eight before they take to the roads if they know the police can prove they were drunk on the spot. Ever seen a carriage accident? It’s not nice. I imagine a car crash is even worse.’

‘I’m being slow this morning. The relevance being?’

‘You won’t give up. None of us will, because Justin was a Raleigh, and he deserves to rest with the knowledge that we will not forget him, no matter how much things change. And change they surely do. Look at me, born into an age of leisured women, at least those of my breeding and status. Life was supposed to be a succession of grand balls interspersed with trips to the opera and holidays in provincial spa towns. Now I have to go out and earn my keep.’

I grinned. ‘No you don’t.’

‘For Mary’s sake, Edward; I had seventeen fine and healthy children before my ovaries were thankfully exhausted in my late nineties. I need something else to do after all that child rearing. And, my dear, I always hated opera. This, however, I enjoy to the full. I think it still shocks Mummy that I’m out here on the scientific frontier. But it does give me certain insights. Come with me.’

I followed her along the length of the forensic department. The end wall was hidden behind a large free-standing chamber made from a dulled metal. A single door was set in the middle, fastened with a heavy latch mechanism. As we drew closer I could hear an electrical engine thrumming incessantly. Other harmonics infiltrated the air, betraying the presence of pumps and gears.

‘Our freezer,’ Rebecca announced with chirpy amusement.

She took a thick fur coat from a peg on the wall outside the chamber, and handed me another.

‘You’ll need it,’ she told me. ‘It’s colder than these fridges which the big grocery stores are starting to use. A lot colder.’

Rebecca told the truth. A curtain of freezing white fog tumbled out when she opened the door. The interior was given over to dozens of shelves, with every square inch covered in a skin of hard white ice. A variety of jars, bags, and sealed glass dishes were stacked up. I peered at their contents with mild curiosity before hurriedly looking away. Somehow, scientific slivers of human organs are even more repellent than the entirety of flesh.

‘What is this?’ I asked.

‘Our family’s insurance policy. Forensic pathology shares this freezer with the medical division. Every biological unknown we’ve encountered is in here. One day we’ll have answers for all of it.’

‘And one day the Borgias will leave the Vatican,’ I said automatically.

Rebecca placed the bag on a high shelf, and gave me a confident smile. ‘You’ll be back.’