“I’ve been through the guest log for last night, and there’s no trace of any Prudence Egwu. If you need me to put a false name out or help you out like that it’s fine, but I expect a little professional courtesy, because if I start to feed my readers that kind of contaminated crap then before long they’re someone else’s readers.”
“I don’t know what to tell you Grape. That’s his name. Maybe the register’s wrong.”
“How can it be wrong? I’m looking at the booking records now.”
“I don’t want to know about your hacking. And I’ve seen the written register and he’s in there. Maybe they haven’t updated it.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then Grape said, “You swear?”, and she was young again, not the hardened professional but the girl out there somewhere in the city who Oates was helping, and he felt a strange gratitude sweep through him.
“Cross my heart.”
“Okay. I’ll check again. So what about this suspect then? I’m hearing all kinds of rumours.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Juicy ones.”
“Like what?”
“Assassin for the Mortal Reformers. Industrial spy. Government provocateur.”
“His name’s Ali Farooz.”
“F-A-R-O-O-Z?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I use it?”
“You can say we have a suspect in custody, he’s helping us with our enquiries and he’s an Avalon employee. That’s it.”
“Did he do it?”
“Come on.”
“You come on.”
“No.”
“No you won’t come on or no he didn’t do it?”
“Both.”
“So who is this poor Eddy?”
“He’s a young guy from Kenya, washed up with the amnesty. Serves food in the canteen, porters, stuff like that.”
She started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“You don’t get it? Oh come on, it’s a scream!”
“No.”
“Someone tried to pretend like the butler did it.”
Oates hung up. He started to walk back into the dome, and to his surprise, he found himself grinning.
“C
AN
I
HAVE
a look at the register?” he said as he entered the ops room.
“Sure.”
Bhupinder nodded his head towards the desk where various articles lay in neat lines, some bagged in plastic, others loose, all bearing numbered labels. The register was leather bound and glistening with gilt at the page ends. Oates flicked through until he came to the date of Mr Egwu’s arrival at the spa. It was the very last signature in the book, but there it was.
“Do we know why Mr Egwu came late?” He spun the book for Bhupinder, who eyed this new source of labour suspiciously. “Ali reckons he helped him with his bags just yesterday.”
“No. I’ll ask Charles.”
“How are the interviews going?”
“Alright. Nothing much so far. They have a curfew so pretty much everyone was in their rooms. I can’t be dealing with this speeded-up time, now it’s light out I feel bloody exhausted. Doesn’t seem like much of a holiday to me. Maybe it’s like opera, you know: it’s boring unless you’re rich.”
“Lori likes opera.”
“Yeah? Well, she’s a special case, your missus. Too good for you,” Bhupinder looked up shyly to check how his joke had gone down, and at the sight of Oates’ smile he gave a little nod of relief. “One thing though, the list of people staying in the school buildings looks about half as long as the list we got from the fire safety team.”
“Is it the staff they missed?”
“No, we got the staff list. I spoke to that PR bloke and he says that that’s right, there’s only half of the guests in here, the other half we don’t need to worry about.”
“But he wouldn’t say where they were?”
“Just that they were in another site somewhere under the dome. Completely separate from St Margaret’s.”
“I’ll talk to him about it. Have you found the victim’s next of kin?”
“As far as we can tell, there isn’t one. No family, no wife, no girlfriend. We sent someone round to see his boss.”
“So we can release his name,” Oates said, thinking of Grape.
“Well there’s one thing you should see, guv. It’s a bit weird, see he used to have a brother but he’s dead. Well, he was declared dead last year. He went missing about six years ago.”
“Okay. So we don’t need to inform him.”
“Yeah, only this is the weird thing, when we started checking up on our systems, a whole load of red flags appeared. Apparently Prudence Egwu made all these complaints about our handling of the original case, even tried to sue us. We have to inform internal investigations that we’ve become involved with him again.”
“Well he’s not likely to try and sue us again now is he?”
“No, I suppose not,” Bhupinder said, as if seriously weighing the risk that the murdered man would take legal action, “but still…”
“He wasn’t still looking for his brother if he’s had him declared dead.”
Bhupinder shook his head, “That was his old job had him declared. Nottingham Biosciences.”
Oates felt suddenly wary.
“Prudence Egwu’s brother used to work for Nottingham?”
“Yeah. And some of the complaints the victim made were against them.”
“What kind of complaints?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only got one pair of hands you know.”
“What else did you find?”
Bhupinder clicked his tongue.
“Who was the investigating officer on the original case?”
“Felix Minor.”
“Oh, brilliant. Perfect.”
The problem with Bhupinder was that he looked depressed and terrified even when everything was going smoothly. As a result, when a genuine problem arose, Oates found himself less prepared with Bhupinder than with any of his other men, as his attitude created in Oates a perverse sense of confidence; however bad things were, they could not be as bad as the Sergeant’s collapsed expression implied.
This time however, Oates had to concede the situation looked suspicious. The victim’s brother being a missing person, his employment by Avalon’s parent company, the complaints and the involvement of Minor, any one of those facts alone would not have been enough to divert the course of the investigation away from his interrogation of Ali. Together however, they had an ominous look.
Oates filled Bhupinder in on the status of their suspect. No one was to be allowed to speak to Ali, and Bhupinder was to continue the investigations in St Margaret’s until Oates’s return. Before he left, he promised to have a word with the management, to get to the bottom of the missing guests.
Oates just wanted the case solved as fast as possible so he could get back to his family. Still, if there had to be delays, he couldn’t think of two people more deserving of inconvenience than Charles and Miranda. He was quietly pleased at the idea of telling them that his men would be muddying their carpets for a few days yet. It suited his mood, to poke his stick in their spokes.
T
HE SCHOOL’S WORKING
day had already begun, and he found Miranda among a group of spectators watching tennis practice on the sunny grass courts on the other side of the river. She was surrounded by various staff members, and the comic, slightly sinister effect of their old fashioned clothes was greatly multiplied by seeing them gathered together. The dew still lay on the grass, and students’ trainers squeaked as they ran. The morning had imparted some of its freshness to the spectators. One young teacher in a nylon shirt was running up and down beside the net, shouting encouragement. Only Miranda was unaffected, and watched the game with cool attention. When she saw Oates coming, she waved a greeting, and came away from the group to speak with him.
“Have you come to say goodbye, Detective Chief Inspector?”
“I have, but only for a little while I’m afraid. I’ve got some business in London, but then I’ll be back.”
“Ah. You mustn’t think me rude, it’s just that as you know we run on double time here. By the time you get back from London it may well be the middle of the night again. We’ve already had one night of interviews and other excitements. I do wish to avoid any further disruption to the students, routine is incredibly important here.”
Oates was conscious of the effect the accelerated days were having on him. The morning sun was rising with unnatural speed. He felt jet-lagged, his body unsure of whether it wanted food, sleep or activity. In identifying this influence, he was able to diagnose a malaise that had affected him ever since his arrival. The creeping sense of loss of control, of having only one opportunity to do everything, must in part be due to the accelerated pace of the day. It was one more thing to beware, in the spa’s wide spectrum of disorientating effects.
“I’m sure my Sergeant can get everyone else interviewed during the day while I’m gone, but there’s some guests he’s been told he can’t see.”
“You may continue to interview all students in the main school.”
“Where are the rest?”
One of the players performed a perfect serve, sending the ball skimming low over the grass, sliding past the leading edge of his opponent’s racket. The cry went up, “Ace!” Miranda clapped, holding her hands above her head. Calls of acclamation came from the group of teachers.
“The rest of the guests could not possibly have had anything to do with the murder,” she said, “nor would they be in any position to give you information, helpful or otherwise.”
“Why not?”
“Guests are physically segregated from St Margaret’s for the first fortnight of their stay.”
“Mr Egwu wasn’t.”
“Mr Egwu arrived late for term. He was to have been transferred to our induction centre today.”
“This induction centre inside the dome?”
“It is.”
“Where?”
“You have the suspect, Inspector. One of my own men apprehended him for you. I understand he has confessed. Surely it’s not too much to ask that the police should remove both the criminal and themselves from this private institution with the minimum disruption to our lawful business. I really fail to see what further help either my staff or my guests could possibly provide. Or should we prepare to try him here as well?”
“He didn’t do it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Whoever killed Prudence Egwu was right handed. Ali is left handed. There’s been an obvious clear up at the crime scene. No DNA, no fingerprints, nothing. Now I want every single person in this whole dome brought to the gym and sat down, and I want statements. If you’ve got a problem with that, I will arrest you and charge you with obstructing a police officer.”
Miranda still wouldn’t look at him. A desire came over him to grab her perfect little chin in his hand and turn it forcibly to face his own. It was some time before she spoke again.
“I had hoped not to involve you in the detailed workings of St Margaret’s. But if you are going to insist on interviewing all the guests, I suppose I must show you why that is quite impossible.”
Oates followed Miranda back down to the towpath. They turned away from the school, and walked for some time in the deep green shadow of the vegetation growing along the bank. In the distance, Oates heard the ringing of the great bell in the courtyard tower. Under the shade of the trees, they met another groundsman. He was carrying a plastic bag held loosely at the top, and when they walked past Oates saw it was filled with dead birds.
Further down the river, they came upon a bend where a tree sank its branches into the clear depths of the water. Moored by a rope to a branch was a punt, and inside on tartan blankets there lay a new-young man and woman in school uniform. They were not touching, but the girl scrambled into a sitting position when she saw Miranda appear on the bank.
“The bell has gone, Stella. Aren’t you supposed to be in Mr Weaver’s class?”
“No ma’am. I’ve got a free period.”
“I’ll be checking when I get back. Now
have you
got a free period?”
“No ma’am.”
“No you haven’t?”
“Yes ma’am. I mean I haven’t.”
“I want both of you to come to my office before assembly tomorrow morning. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And take that punt back to the boathouse, please.”
The boy, with an ostentatious slowness, got up, stretched, and went to undo the rope from the branch. And yet he obeyed. There was something about his limited defiance which was incredibly… immature. An adult would either have told her to piss off, or would have done as he was asked without theatricality. The boy was implying that he could defy her if he wanted to, he just didn’t want to right now, thank you. It was so teenage, Oates had a moment of self-doubt. Perhaps this was a real-young boy, mixed up with the new-young. But physically, he must be at least twenty. His attitude was immature even for a twenty-year-old. He was behaving like a boy of fifteen. It was clear that this was in fact one of Avalon’s guests, a man in his seventies or eighties, no doubt with some business or political empire beyond the walls paralysed by his absence. And here he was pretending to be a naughty schoolboy. The encounter left Oates with an overwhelming sense of embarrassment.
They carried on down the path for ten minutes, at the end of which they emerged into a clearing surrounded by trees. In the middle of the clearing stood a group of low buildings. They were new-build and lacked the artful dilapidation of the rest of St Margaret’s. Seeing these sleek glass and stainless steel cubes, Oates could appreciate the cleverness that had gone into the architecture of the school proper. The designers had built and then distressed the school to give the impression of a continuous flow of youth, eroding the fabric of the walls and pavements like water flowing through rock. By contrast, the structures in this clearing put Oates in mind of a hi-tech industrial park, a laboratory for the construction of precision instruments.
Oates and Miranda entered one of the buildings through an unobtrusive reception. By this time he expected the blue-suited groundsmen just inside the doors. He was asked to don a body suit, hairnet and slippers similar to the ones he had worn in the crime scene. They passed through an airlock into a long chamber which reminded him of a distillery. Arranged at regular intervals throughout the warm interior were a series of great glass cylinders filled with a translucent liquid the rich colour of honey, tinged a coppery pink where the lights on the ceiling shone through. The liquid was sufficiently viscous to hold in its interior a galaxy of tiny bubbles and suspended particles which caught the glare of the bulbs from the ceiling like dust motes in a beam of sunshine.