The Mandel Files, Volume 1: Mindstar Rising & a Quantum Murder

  He could feel her shaking with laughter and a crazy burn of exhilaration.

  Right on time a voice said, ‘Hey, sorry folks, but you’re gonna have to move along.’

  Greg was facing the quay so he couldn’t see the speaker, but he recognized Toby’s baritone rumble. Besides, Gabriel said it would be him. He carried on smooching with Suzi.

  There was a faint vibration as Toby walked down the gangplank.

  ‘I said—’

  Suzi’s Armscor stunshot spat a dart of electric-blue flame. Greg heard a startled grunt and turned just in time to catch Toby before he hit the gangplank. Asking himself why the hell he bothered.

  Suzi was racing up the gangplank. Greg followed dragging Toby. The bodyguard’s breathing was ragged, slitted whites of his eyes showing in the fallout from the silent twinkling light-storm overhead.

  As always Greg experienced the conviction of operating under divine protection. With Gabriel’s guidance he’d become omnipotent.

  Suzi ducked into the darker oval of an open hatch, fumbling her photon amp into place as she went.

  Greg pulled his own photon amp out of the dinner jacket’s pocket. That reassuringly familiar pinching as the band annealed to his skin. Mirriam resolved into cold hard reality around him, nebulous leaden shadows stabilizing into sharply defined blue and grey outlines.

  02:12:29, flashed the yellow digits.

  ‘At two hours, twelve minutes and thirty-five seconds GMT the crewman will exit the cabin-lounge door on to the afterdeck,’ Gabriel had said, her voice raised above the Trinities’ scoffing.

  Greg dumped Toby on the glossy polished decking and ran for the afterdeck, black leather shoes squeaking.

  02:12:35.

  ‘At twelve minutes and forty-one seconds GMT he’ll move into your line of sight.’

  02:12:38.

  Greg stopped and assumed a marksman stance with his Armscor. Lining it up one metre wide of the corner of the superstructure.

  02:12:41.

  The crewman obviously knew something was amiss; he came round the corner of the superstructure fast, crouched low.

  The photon amp showed a monster crab scuttling right at him, metre length of pipe instead of claw. He fired.

  ‘The crewman’s name is Nicky.’

  Metallic clangour as the crab’s erratic momentum skated him into the railing, pipe skittering away anarchically. ‘Bye, Nicky,’ Greg whispered.

  ‘Radar cancelled,’ Suzi’s voice squawked in his earpiece. ‘God, this place is exactly like Lady Gee described it. Wild!’

  Greg finished up at the stern, scanning the glum water of the marina and its flotsam carpet of decaying seaweed. Oily ripples slapped lazily at Mirriam’s hull.

  ‘On the taffrail you’ll find a control box with six weather-proofed buttons. Press the second from the left.’

  The box was there. Rigid forefinger pressing. A stifled drone of a motor lowering the diving platform ladder.

  The inflatable dinghy surged out of the gloaming, four figures hunched down, muffled engine cutting a hazy wake through the seaweed. It turned a finely judged arc and rode its bow wave to a halt at the foot of the ladder. The first three figures swarmed up the ladder, dressed in combat leathers and helmets. Des and two of his troop, Lynne and Roddy.

  They ignored Greg and crossed the deck to the half-open cabin-lounge door. Des slid it right back and the three of them rushed in.

  Greg leant over the taffrail to see Gabriel puffing her way up the ladder. She was wearing a balaclava and a heavy night-camouflage flak jacket, restricting her movements; it was the largest the Trinities had in stock. He put his hand down and diplomatically helped her over the railing.

  She tugged the balaclava off, wiping the back of her hand across her perspiring forehead. ‘We’re too old for this Greg, you and I, believe me. If you weren’t such a bloody ignorant stubborn bugger.’ A resigned smile lifted her lips. Shaking her head. ‘Crazy.’

  Greg smiled fondly. ‘Tell you, I have a horrible feeling you may be right.’

  ‘That’s my boy.’ A sudden frown wrinkled her plump features. ‘Damn.’ She thumbed the comm set in her breast pocket. ‘Lynne, it’s not that hatch, go to the next one … that’s right. The crewman is standing behind the cowling.’

  ‘Come on,’ Greg said. ‘Time for you and I to rescue the damsel.’

  ‘You know, Teddy’s done a good job with those kids,’ Gabriel admitted grudgingly as they moved into the lounge.

  Greg negotiated the unfamiliar obstacles and found the central companionway. A tube of impenetrably black air, which even the photon amp had difficulty discerning.

  ‘Are we all right for some light?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. One moment.’

  Greg heard her shut the lounge door, then the biolum strip came on. He peeled the photon amp off. Suzi slithered down a narrow set of stairs from the bridge.

  ‘Mega,’ she breathed, pulling off her wig and ruffing up her mauve spikes. ‘You got it spot on, Lady Gee. All of it. Where you said, when you said. It’s fucking incredible.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’

  The three of them headed for the lower deck. Thick vermilion carpet absorbed their footfalls down the stairs. One of the crewmen was lying on the bottom step, his limbs shivering spastically from the stunshot charge. Des was waiting for them outside the master bedroom’s door, helmet off, grinning broadly, his hair a dark sweaty mat.

  ‘All right!’ he whooped blithely. ‘We breezed it, no problem. You ever need a job, Gran, you come’n see me, OK?’

  ‘You’re too kind,’ Gabriel said.

  Des missed the mounting testiness, but Suzi winked at Greg, rolling her eyes for his denseness. Lynne and Roddy clattered up the stairs from the crew quarters below.

  ‘Shall we get on with it?’ Gabriel said, hurriedly forestalling the compliment Lynne had opened her mouth to begin. She took an infuser tube out of her flak jacket and handed it to Suzi. ‘You’ll need this.’

  Suzi turned it over, mildly curious. ‘What for?’

  ‘She’s a big girl.’

  Des and Roddy exchanged a glance.

  ‘Is she armed?’ Lynne enquired.

  ‘No.’

  Greg knew that mood well enough, Gabriel at her most obdurate. There’d be no budging her now.

  He opened the bedroom door. There was a subdued pink light inside.

  ‘Hoo boy.’ Suzi groaned in pawky dismay. Des and Roddy piled in behind her for a look,

  Katerina was sprawled across a huge circular water-bed, wearing an Arabian harem slave costume; strips of diaphanous lemon chiffon held together with thin gold chains. It was a size too small, strained by the curves of her breasts and hips. The chiffon was so flimsy they could see her large areolas through it, dark purple-brown circles with aroused nipples.

  Katerina batted drowsy eyelids at the five faces staring down at her. ‘I’m ready,’ was all she said.

  Roddy let out a low admiring whistle. ‘Makes it all kind’ve worthwhile, doesn’t it?’

  Des sniggered.

  ‘For God’s sake find something to wrap her in,’ Greg said. Annoyed at their abrupt lapse of discipline. Hardly surprised, though. The porno-starlet stage setting sapped any sense of urgency. He let out a hiss of breath, silently cursing Gabriel for not warning him. ‘Suzi, help me get her up.’

  Katerina looked up with innocent bewilderment as they each took an arm and tugged her into a sitting position. ‘I remember you,’ she said to Greg. ‘Will you make it happen, too?’

  ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘But this is the paradise place. The hurt and the wonder always happens here.’

  ‘Bollocks, what’s she on?’ asked Suzi.

  ‘Phyltre. Stuff’s blowing her brain apart.’

  Katerina turned her head to focus on Suzi. ‘Can you make it happen?’

  ‘No way, girl. Come on, let’s get you out of here.’

  Something in Suzi’s inflexible tone must’ve finally pen
etrated Katerina’s befuddled brain. ‘I don’t want to leave, not here, not the wonder. Not ever.’

  Suzi brought up the infuser in a no-nonsense manner.

  Katerina’s bare foot lashed out, catching Suzi full in the stomach. She went down with a silent oof, curling around herself and fighting for breath. Greg was suddenly left holding a screaming, scratching, biting, kicking she-demon. Gabriel was right, Katerina was big, and strong, and utterly deranged. Tapering lavender nails slashed at his eyes, a knee thudded into his pelvic bone, a tornado of golden hair filled the air. He felt soft flesh, hard flesh. Hampered by not wanting to hurt her. An inhibition rapidly dissolving.

  Des made a grab for Katerina’s shoulders, succeeding only in ripping her mock slave-costume. All three of them tumbled to the floor in a frenziedly bucking heap. Then Lynne waded in, trying to pin Katerina’s arms down. Roddy managed to grab hold of one leg. Finally a wheezing Suzi slammed the infuser on Katerina’s neck with unnecessary force. For one horrendous moment Greg thought it wasn’t going to have any effect, but a look of outright surprise shot across Katerina’s enraged face and she subsided into a limp bundle shrouded in wispy scraps of lemon fog.

  ‘Goddamn … ungrateful … bitch,’ Suzi spat between shudders. Her face was chalk-white. Greg thought she was going to kick the unconscious body. Probably wouldn’t have stopped her.

  ‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing,’ he offered in apology. ‘Hey, you all right?’

  Her hands were still clasped tight around her abdomen. ‘Yeah. Bitch.’

  Roddy wrapped a towelling robe around Katerina, and Des carried her out in a fireman’s lift.

  Gabriel stood to one side as they filed out of the master bedroom. ‘Told you so,’ she said.

  The seven of them rode the dinghy back to Event Horizon’s finance division offices, stealing quietly across the Nene’s scummy water, making good headway against the outgoing tide. City noises thrummed around them; sirens, horns, the trill of gas-powered traffic, peals of jukebox music from riverside pubs. The sough of the dinghy’s electric outboard was lost without trace.

  Des dodged the big freighters anchored in the middle of the river outside the port. They were waiting for the early morning tide to provide the draught they needed to take them down the channel to the Wash. Rust-streaked metal giants, sprinkled with tiny navigation lights, their bows a check pattern of hoarfrost where their liquefied gas tanks nestled against the hull. Greg could hear a steady plop plop plop as chunks of the mushy rime fell into the water.

  Once the freighters were left behind it was a straight ride up the Nene to the Ferry Meadows estuary. The Trinities loosened up, schoolboys returning from a day outing. Their hive-buzz chatter percolated about the inflatable – Mirriam crewmen I have zapped.

  Des even had a beacon to aim at. Philip Evans had chosen to celebrate his company’s triumphant return to solid land with a thirty-five-metre-high sign perched on top of Event Horizon’s finance division offices. Its core was a macramé plait of colourful neon tubes orbited by stylized holographic doodles – expanding geometric graphics, cartoon characters, origami birds, and, at Christmas time, a traditional Santa replete with sledge and reindeer. Monumentally vulgar, but mesmerizing at the same time.

  The deep-throated gurgling of the tidal turbines grew steadily louder as they drew near the little quay jutting out from the steep concrete embankment below the ugly cuboid building.

  Victor Tyo was waiting for them, huddled in a parka against the fresh pre-dawn air rising off the estuary. He offered a gentlemanly hand to Gabriel, then grappled a semiconscious Katerina ashore. She groaned as her bare feet touched the cold concrete.

  ‘Why are her hands tied?’ Victor asked reasonably, as Greg stepped ashore and took some of the weight.

  ‘Coz there wasn’t enough rope for her fucking neck,’ Suzi growled out of the dark.

  Victor peered down at the inflatable dinghy with its oblique cargo of well-armed hardliners and an underage girl in a revealing gold party frock. ‘Bloody hell.’

  Des gunned the throttle and the little craft surged out into the darkness. ‘See ya, Greg,’ Suzi called. ‘And take care of Lady Gee, she’s outta this world.’

  Walshaw and Julia were waiting in a big corner office on the third floor. Rachel Griffith stood outside. It was a monastically simple room; the walls and ceiling were painted a uniform white, contrasting against the all-black fittings. Greg knew it was Walshaw’s office without having to be told. An extension of his personality. Comfortable, efficient, and uncluttered. The furniture was unembellished, two chairs in front of a broad desk, a settee against the wall. Honey-yellow louvre blinds shut out a view of what Greg’s sense of direction told him would be the estuary. The air was warm and slightly damp; stale, the way it got after people had been breathing it for several hours.

  Walshaw was sitting behind the desk when they walked in. Greg was surprised to see the surface covered in little balls of scrunched-up paper.

  Julia was rising from the settee, knuckles screwing sleep out of her eyes. She was wearing a V-necked lilac dress with a pleated skirt. A tangerine woollen cobweb shawl was drawn around her shoulders.

  She allowed herself a rueful grin. ‘Midnight, he says. It’s gone three.’

  Then Victor Tyo and one of his squad members carried Katerina in between them. She’d begun to hum tunelessly.

  Julia stared at her old schoolfriend, humour and toughness leaching from her face. Whatever zombie incarnation she’d been girding herself for, it wasn’t a match for the mental-husk reality provided.

  Katerina was lowered on to the settee, utterly uninterested in her environment.

  Julia sent Greg a silent desperate plea that this was some awful nightmare, not real.

  Walshaw frowned disapprovingly at the grubby rope wrapped round Katerina’s wrists. Greg pointed to the fresh scratches on his face.

  ‘See if you can find some padded cuffs,’ Walsaw told Victor. ‘And tell Dr Taylor to stand by. She’ll probably need sedating.’

  Victor nodded crisply and departed, happy to be out of the office.

  Julia sank down on to the settee, peering timidly at the beautiful empty shell slumped quiescently beside her. ‘Kats? Kats, it’s me, Julia. Julie. Can you hear me, Kats? Please, Kats. Please.’

  Katerina’s lost eyes swam round. ‘Julie,’ she sighed inanely. ‘Julie. Never thought it would be you. They bring so many others for me, but never you. It’s late, isn’t it? I can feel it. It’s always late when they come for me. We’ll be good, won’t we, Julie? You and I, when he watches? If we’re good then I can go to him afterwards.’

  ‘Yah,’ Julia stammered. Her eyes had begun to brim with tears. ‘Yah, Kats, we’ll be good. The best. Promise.’ She pulled her shawl off and tucked it clumsily around her friend’s trembling shoulders. ‘I’d like you to leave us alone now,’ she said without looking round.

  Greg had known some officers who could speak like that. Commanding instant obedience. Rank had nothing to do with it, their voice plugged directly into the nervous system.

  As he left the office he saw Julia tenderly smoothing back Katerina’s dishevelled tresses.

  The corridor was narrow with a high ceiling, built from composite panels which cut up the original open-plan floor into a compartmented maze. A pink-tinged biolum strip ran overhead, its unremitting luminescence showing up the threadbare rut running down the centre of the chestnut carpet squares.

  Walshaw closed the door behind him. Rachel moved down towards the lift, giving them a degree of privacy.

  ‘I’ve been doing some checking this afternoon,’ Walshaw said. ‘There’s a clinic on Granada which claims it can cure phyltre addiction.’

  ‘Successfully?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Forty per cent of the patients recover. I was wondering. Miss Thompson, isn’t it?’

  Gabriel was resting with her back flat on the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Greg recognized the state, he’d se
en it in the mirror often enough. That relentless enervation which siphoned the vitality out of every cell.

  ‘Morgan, to someone of your age and ex-rank I’m Gabriel, OK? But no, I can’t tell if it works with Katerina. That’s too far into the future.’

  ‘I don’t think Julia will give up,’ Greg said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose she will,’ Walshaw agreed.

  ‘You know Kendric di Girolamo is going to have to be eliminated, don’t you?’ Greg said.

  Walshaw reached up languidly and began massaging his neck. ‘Eventually, yes.’

  ‘No. Not eventually. You’ve seen what he’s done to that girl; and that was just for fun. The guy’s an absolute loon. Tell you, I’ve seen inside his mind. Homicidal psychopath isn’t the half of it. Julia needs head-of-state-level protection while he’s on the loose, no messing.’

  ‘Julia has been badgering me to do the same thing. She is even more intent than you, if anything.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, after what she went through with Kendric. Paedophile shit.’

  Walshaw turned his head very slowly until he was staring directly at Greg. ‘What?’

  ‘Kendric and Julia; he seduced her. You didn’t know?’

  ‘She hates Kendric.’

  ‘Not always,’ Greg said. He couldn’t ever remember seeing Walshaw so thrown before, not even the blitz and the possibility of a leak in the giga-conductor project had upset him this much. Another of Julia’s secret admirers.

  ‘So that’s what is behind this sudden urge for blood,’ Walshaw said tightly.

  ‘It’s not just a wronged girl’s lex talionis. Kendric is dangerous, believe me.’

  ‘I do.’ For a second the security chief looked heartbroken. Greg was suddenly glad he didn’t have the use of his gland at that moment, there were some secrets people were entitled to keep. He guessed Julia had become a surrogate daughter to Walshaw over the years. That strange character flaw of his, the need to have someone to provide him with a purpose in life.

  ‘Kendric can’t be eliminated right now, dangerous though he undoubtedly is,’ Walshaw said. ‘Your episode with Charles Ellis at the Castlewood condominium confirms there is someone else involved, the organizer of the blitz. Kendric couldn’t have arranged for the sniper at Ellis’s penthouse, because he didn’t know Wolf. Which makes Kendric our last link with the organizer. And we have to find out who that is.’