A Quantum Murder

  * * * *

  Eyes closed, blockading the sleet of photons into the brain's reception centre, a tide of starless night engulfed him. Eleanor's mind rose silently into the void, a gas-giant as seen from one of its innermost moons. Vast and heavy. Thought currents swirled, individual strands showing pink, white, and ochre-red, like meandering stormbands, curling round each other to produce complex interlocking vortices. Stains of trepidation bled up out of the deeper psyche, dissolving into the surface thoughts, quickening the rhythm.

  Relax, he told her.

  The mind's superficies quaked in surprise, sending out distortion ripples.

  Greg?

  Yeah. Why, who did you think?

  Just remember this is all new to me.

  I haven't experienced this sort of affinity many times, myself.

  Oh. Greg? I think I can see the bedroom. My eyes are still shut, aren't they?

  He snatched a fast look. Yeah, they're shut. He let his own mind relax into passivity, a pure receiver. That eerie phosphorescent cloudscape lost cohesion, filming over with watery streaks of alien colour. When he studied them closer they resolved into walls, furniture, people, himself. He was still sitting on the side of the bed. Gabriel was stuck in a ridiculous posture; mouth open, hands captured in mid-gesture.

  You are smiling, Eleanor said.

  I've just seen me as you see me. It's interesting.

  The room is all still, like a hologram.

  Yeah. Now, what I want you to do, very slowly, is hunt round for a watch, and just imagine yourself sliding towards it. Got that?

  No problem.

  The perception focus shifted, they curved out and upwards, an eagle in flight, heading for Gabriel's wrist. Her watch was a plain silver band with dry scarlet numbers flush with the surface, as if they were floating on a lake of mercury.

  Nine forty-seven, Greg read. About eight minutes ago. OK, now can you see anything around the fringes of the room?

  Like what?

  A lack of definition, something like the blurred multiple you get right at the edge of a mirror.

  No. Nothing like that.

  OK Pull back from the room, the opposite of when you zoomed in on the watch.

  Ah, yes.

  The image flowed, rushing past so fast he thought he could feel the wind of its passage. Yet the walls, the furniture, the fittings, they all stayed in the same place. Darkness fell, siphoning out every shade of colour. In the night sky outside the window, stars traced sparkling arcs across the heavens, flickering in and out of existence as blankets of cloud churned past at supersonic speed.

  Very good, he told her drily, but can you stop?

  The vertiginous motion slowed. Halted. It was dusk, a paltry smattering of rain leaking from bleak clouds. The room was deserted, its frost of plastic sheets glimmering a dirty indigo.

  Up?

  Inside, you know?

  Stop. Right away.

  Bloody hell, said Eleanor. There was a dazed quality to her thoughts, almost like giddiness. I did it, Greg. The past!

  Yeah. Yesterday evening, I think. How are you standing?

  OK. There's this feeling of pressure. Like I'm pushing against something.

  If it ever gets to be an effort then Eleanor. Don't try and tough it out.

  OK.

  Any sign of alternatives yet?

  God, no, Greg. This is bad enough.

  Just asking. Now let's go back to the night of the murder. One week, Thursday night, midnight, or as close as we can get.

  All right.

  The room surged around him again.

  They stopped a few times, watching Denzil or Nicolette come in and run hand-held sensors over the furniture and carpet. Sometimes they would bag an item up and take it out.

  Last Friday was a blur of activity, with as many as seven or eight people crowding in at once, whizzing around. The sheets of plastic crumpled up, shrinking, vanishing, leaving the chairs and tables exposed again.

  Night closed in.

  Here we go, Eleanor said.

  He could sense the tension, and the effort, in her mind, thoughts stretched as taut as an athlete's sinew.

  Nicholas Beswick was sitting at the desk, absorbed with the dense sapphire graphics slithering through his terminal's cube. Erratic moonbeams were raking the parkland outside.

  You were right about Nicholas, Eleanor said, he does need looking after, doesn't he?

  Yeah. I like him.

  Me too.

  This ought to be about the time when Rosette and Isabel traipse off to see Kitchener. Move in to the bedside cabinet, we'll have a look at the clock.

  The perception point drifted downwards until it was level with Nicholas's head. Surprise scrawled across his face, eyes widening.

  He can see me!

  Greg could sense her own startled thoughts as Nicholas opened his mouth to emit what must have been a gasp. There was no sound. Perturbed, Eleanor started to pull away, the image slowing. Graphics in the cube moved with increasing sluggishness until they finally froze.

  This is what we came for, he reminded her.

  Sorry.

  She had moved directly above Nicholas when animation returned to the scene. Nicholas jerked round frantically in his chair, searching about. After a moment the tension seemed to evaporate from him, he rubbed his hands over his eyes and typed a code into the terminal. Then he stiffened, his head turning slowly until he was looking at the door.

  This is it, Greg said. I want you to try and follow Rosette and Isabel down to Kitchener's bedroom, OK?

  Do my best.

  Nicholas had walked over to the door. Greg watched him gathering up the courage to turn the handle.

  As soon as the door opened, Eleanor glided through it, staying near the ceiling and looking down. Rosette was wearing a green silk kimono. Isabel was just in her bra and jeans; her raw sexuality was devastating.

  Rosette said a few words to Nicholas, then both girls left him behind as they walked down the gloomy corridor. Greg didn't like the stricken expression on Nicholas's face, not one bit. The boy was far too young to have his heart broken so cruelly. But then, when is a good age?

  That poor boy, Eleanor said.

  No messing.

  The two girls exchanged furtive whispers as they headed for Kitchener's room. Both of them looked guilty.

  Hope you choke on it, Greg wished them silently.

  Kitchener was wearing white cotton pyjamas. He greeted both girls with an effusive smile. The old man gestured a lot, Greg saw, arms constantly on the move. Rosette and Isabel were both kissed exuberantly. Some of their chirpiness had returned.

  The first thing Rosette did was go over to a bedside cabinet and take out an infuser tube. It was gold plated, the size of her middle finger. She applied it expertly to Isabel's neck.

  Wants to get her cloudsailng before she says anything about Nicholas to Kitchener, Greg thought.

  Isabel wriggled sinuously out of her tight jeans as Kitchener sat himself down in a big armchair beside the bed. His eyes never left her, Isabel moved into Rosette's embrace where her hair was stroked, cheeks caressed. More than anything it looked like she was being soothed, calmed like a skittish animal.

  Tell me, Gregory, exactly how much of this do you envisage watching?

  He sensed she wanted to make a joke of it, but the mental tone fell terribly short. In a body a long way away anticipation was building like a static charge along his spine. He had said he couldn't envisage what kind of man would commit such barbarism, now he was going to be shown the atrocity in its entirety.

  A naked Isabel stood at the side of the bed, facing Kitchener, her head tipped back slightly, eyelids fluttering, hands rubbing insistently up and down the outside curve of her hips. The old man's eyes traced over her figure as he sipped a glass of port. Rosette began to kiss her throat with provocative tenderness, tongue licking at the curves and hollows of flesh. She descended along the cleft between Isabel's conical breasts, on to the flat
expanse of belly, hungry now, her hands clasping the smaller girl's buttocks. Isabel's mouth parted to sigh, her eyes and soul shining by the light of syntho's icy fire.

  Take us ahead to when they leave, Greg said.

  Isabel lay back on the sheets, spreading her limbs wide, torso flexing sensually. Rosette dropped her robe and climbed on to the bed, slowly lowering herself on to Isabel.

  Eleanor's focal shift accelerated the two squirming figures into hazy smears. The third figure rose from the chair and joined them. In combination the trio had that same rarefied blur as a dragonfly wing.

  The girls left at twenty-seven minutes to three. They were leaning against each other, Rosette with her arm thrown protectively around Isabel. The smaller girl was drowsy, a lifeless smile of satisfaction on her lips. Kitchener snoozed on the bed, white hair askew.

  How are you coping? Greg asked.

  That feeling of being squeezed, it's much tighter now.

  OK let's shift forward a little then.

  The door opened at eighteen minutes past four. Nicholas Beswick walked in.

  "Greg!" The voice encompassed anguish and dread, finishing with a tiny whimper.

  He heard it, actually heard it, the force breaking through the neurohormone's isolation.

  No no no, her mind cried.

  Stay with it. Keep centred, Eleanor, you must keep your mind centred here.

  But Greg!

  I know. It might not be him. Just a few minutes more, that's all, please.

  He'd said it, but he didn't believe it.

  Nicholas was wearing a brown apron, naked underneath except for a pair of underpants. His right hand gripped a thirty-centimetre-long carving knife.

  Through a clammy chill of disbelief, Greg watched the boy walk over to the bed. He put the knife down on the cabinet, and picked up one of the pillows. Kitchener stirred briefly. Nicholas lowered the pillow on to the old man's face.

  Greg, oh Greg, stop him.

  I can't, darling. I can't.

  Kitchener woke at the very end, scrawny limbs thrashing about. Nicholas's teeth were bared in a feral smile, biceps standing proud as he kept the pillow in place. The feeble scrabbling stopped after less than half a minute. Nicholas didn't lift the pillow for another ninety seconds. After that, he put it back with the others at the head of the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles with the edge of his hand.

  He looked down at Kitchener, head bowed almost reverently, then crossed himself. It took him two minutes to methodically unbutton and remove the old man's pyjamas, folding them neatly and placing them on the armchair. When he was finished, he straddled the corpse across its hips. The tip of the knife was brought to rest just above the belly button, dullness of the well-worn metal contrasting against the now etiolate skin.

  Nicholas leant forward, pressing down with all his weight. The knife penetrated smoothly, almost up to the handle, and he began to move it forwards, up the chest, in a rough sawing motion.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was truly a cell now. The door remained locked, even when Nicholas knocked on it. Meals, interviews, and his lawyer; that was all it opened for. And the trip to the magistrates' court.

  The police had taken him there on Friday morning, twenty-four hours after Eleanor Mandel had tossed about on the bed in his room at the Abbey, opening her eyes to reveal abject revulsion, and rolling over to throw up on the glossy polythene sheet covering the carpet. It was the look she had given him which wounded him the most, the absolute horror, as if his very presence could contaminate her soul. And she'd been so nice to him before, so friendly, not seeming to notice his embarrassment at the shock her appearance had triggered. Girls didn't normally treat him like that; he was either nonexistent or an object of pity, sometimes of scorn. He was secretly a little bit in love with Eleanor; she seemed so forthright, able to cope with life. She was also staggeringly pretty, even though thinking that was disloyal to Isabel.

  The words had come shimmering out of her mouth as she gagged, Greg hugging her shoulders, protective and concerned. "He did it. Jesus, he didn't even blink." She sucked down some air, wiping a sticky thread of vomit from her lips. "What are you?"

  That was when her mad eyes found him, their stare an almost tangible force, tightening round his throat.

  Something shivered inside him then, enervating his legs. The cold terrible certainty that she must mean him. She was accusing him!

  "Who?" It was spoken by half the people in the room. He may even have joined in. He couldn't remember.

  But she said nothing. Just glared, her ragged breathing the only sound. Then Greg's stare was added to hers, calm and hateful, and Nicholas felt his face reddening even as the clamour of bewilderment inside his skull made him blurt:

  "What? What? What have I done?"

  "He did it," Greg told the detectives. His voice had gone husky, saddened more than anything.

  Langley had looked at Nicholas, then Greg, then back again. "Him?" he asked incredulously. "Beswick?"

  "For Christ's sake put some handcuffs on him," Eleanor rasped. "If you'd only seen what he did ..."

  Greg's arm tightened round her. She had started to tremble.

  "But you interviewed him," Vernon Langley said. "You cleared him."

  "I told you when we started. I'd never seen that kind of mind before, didn't know what to look for. Well, now I do. He's completely cracked, won't even admit it to himself. Jesus, he was fucking inhuman back there."

  "No," Nicholas said. But nobody appeared to have heard him. "No. I didn't. I didn't do that."

  "Are you sure?" Langley asked Greg reluctantly.

  "Yeah. It was him."

  "No," Nicholas said. "No."

  Amanda Paterson and Jon Nevin had somehow moved to stand on either side of his chair. He glanced up at them, face pleading. "I didn't."

  "Is there any proof; solid proof, I mean?" Langley asked. "Can we test the clothes he was wearing?"

  "I can do you one better than that," Greg said. "I can show you where he left the knife."

  "I didn't do it!" Why wouldn't anyone listen?

  "It's downstairs, in the kitchen," Greg said.

  "We checked the kitchen," Amanda retorted indignantly.

  "Not all of it."

  "You two," Langley signalled his colleagues—"bring him with us, and keep an eye on him. I don't want any sudden sprints across the park."

  "I'll stay up here," Eleanor said shakily.

  "Me too," Gabriel said.

  "OK," Greg said. He patted Eleanor's shoulder. "I'll be back straight away."

  She nodded weakly, hunching in on herself as though she was freezing.

  Nicholas felt Jon Nevin's hand on his forearm. He didn't protest. His strangely leaden limbs needed all the help they could get to rise out of the chair. Gabriel had gone to sit beside Eleanor, the two of them with their heads together, murmuring quietly.

  In the kitchen, Greg walked straight over to the iron range. "It's in here," he pointed to the copper bedwarmer hanging on the wall. "He hid it when he was burning the apron."

  "Don't touch it," Denzil said. He and Nicolette cleared the kitchen table, covering it with a broad sheet of polythene. They put on thin yellow gloves and gingerly took the bed-warmer off its hook. The three detectives crowded round as Denzil opened it; Nicholas couldn't see.

  Langley turned round, his face struggling against an expression of loathing. "Nicholas Beswick, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of one Edward Kitchener."

  "No!"

  There was a long knife in the bedwarmer, its blade snapped off at the base so that it could be wedged in the tarnished copper basin. The handle was rolling loose in the bottom. Both were stained black from dried blood.

  "You do not have to say anything at this time, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used as evidence against you in a court of law."

  His hands were jerked behind him. Rings of cold metal constricting his wrists. The snick of the locks.

 
"I didn't do it."

  They were deaf, immune to any words he said. They also detested him. He had never known that before. People so rarely paid him any attention at all. In the first few days after the murder, the Oakham police had treated him with a slightly puzzled indulgence, as if he was some kind of foreign animal that they didn't know how to feed properly.

  But after Nevin brought him back from the Abbey it had been different. The word had gone out in advance. Off-duty officers had stood in doorways as he was marched through the station corridors to his cell. He'd cringed from the way they regarded him, the naked revulsion, expecting to be set upon and beaten. There had been no violence. The cuffs had been tight, though, his hands swelling and swelling until he. thought they would burst. They had left them on for ages, long after his fingers had gone numb, dragging out the booking procedure.

  He had caught one glimpse of Isabel, just as he was being put into the cell. Nevin was finally taking off his cuffs in the corridor outside when she emerged from the cell she'd been sleeping in. He cried out her name, and she turned. That was when he saw her face was like all the others.

  "I didn't do it."

  Her head tipped to one side, faintly nonplussed, at one remove from the world, like the times he'd seen her performing a difficult equation. There was virtually no sign of recognition.

  "Please, Isabel. I didn't."

  Her bottom lip turned down, as if it was all of no consequence, trivia. She was still utterly beautiful.

  A shove between his shoulder blades sent him stumbling into the cell as blood and feeling shot violently back into his hands. The door slammed shut, lock whirring.

  He had thought the night was bad, alone with near-suicidal confusion, the memories of the allegations. Eleanor's desolated face, the knife with its awful scale of black flakes. Nobody would talk to him, the sergeant who brought his evening meal simply slammed the moulded tray down on the table, mute.

  Somehow, somewhere, there had been a terrible mistake. He had waited and waited for them to find out where they had gone wrong, to come back and set him free. He didn't want an apology, he just wanted to be allowed to go.

  Gnats and small ochre moths emerged from the dead conditioning grille, fluttering silently round the biolum panel. The light stayed on all night. Nicholas huddled into a corner of the cell below the high window, drawing his knees up against his chest, a blanket round his shoulders, waiting, waiting—