Kethani Part 16

Standish nodded. "Anything that might shed light-?"

Singh interrupted. "Nothing." He smiled at Standish's puzzlement. "The records go back three years, during her time with over half a dozen Onward Stations up and down the country. Before that, Sarah Roberts didn't exist, officially, that is."

"So 'Sarah Roberts' was an alias?"

"Something like that. We're checking with the Ministry of Kethani Affairs. Chances are that the whole thing will be taken away from us and declared cla.s.sified. If she was important enough to work for the Ministry in some hush-hush capacity, then the killing might be deemed too sensitive a matter for us mere workaday coppers."

"And you think the killing might have been linked to her work?"

"Impossible to tell. Between you and me, I don't think we'll ever find out."

Standish let his gaze stray again to the projected image of Sarah Roberts. "Have the techs come up with any reason for the dysfunction of her implant?"

"They're mystified. I wondered if it could have been linked to the killing-if the killer had in some way disabled it-but they simply couldn't tell me. They've never come across anything like it."

"And she's... I mean, there's no way they can save her?"

Singh pulled an exaggeratedly doleful face. "I'm afraid not. Sarah Roberts is dead."

Standish averted his gaze from the ghost of the woman lying on the carpet, and asked, "Is it okay if I take another look around?"

"Be my guest. Forensics have almost finished."

Standish climbed the stairs and inspected the bedrooms again. He was struck by the improbability of a woman in her mid-twenties choosing to sleep in a single bed. He looked around the room. It was remarkable only for the lack of personality stamped upon the room during the three months that Sarah Roberts had lived there: a brush and comb sat on a dresser, next to a closed make-up box. They looked like they had been placed there by stagehands, to give spurious authenticity to a set.

He moved to the bathroom, where yesterday he had been aware of something not quite right. Now he realised what he'd missed: the room was bare, no toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, hair-gels, hand creams, or toiletries of any kind.

Another d.a.m.ned mystery to add to all the others.

He returned downstairs and found the detective inspector in the kitchen, peering into the fridge.

"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 trespa.s.sing on your territory, that is?"

"Let's share anything we come up with, okay?" Singh said. "G.o.d 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.cious, 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 a.s.sist 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, doc.u.ment 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 Kethani 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 pa.s.sed 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 ident.i.ty of his wife's lover, then finished his s.h.i.+ft 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 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-c.u.m-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 a.s.sumed no one was looking and established eye contact with each other with charming regularity.

It reminded him of the early days with Amanda... Christ, was it really twenty years ago, now?

Ben Knightly said, "I read about the murder in this morning's paper..."

Standish nodded. "We've got no further with the investigation, to be honest. We need all the help we can get. Richard mentioned you saw something."

Ben Knightly was a big man with ma.s.sive, outdoor hands. When he wasn't holding his wife's hand beneath the table, he clutched his pint, as if nervous. "I was working in the Patterson's top field," he said hesitantly. "I was just across the valley. It was around four, maybe a bit later."

"How far were you from the Roberts' farmhouse?" Standish asked, wondering exactly how far away "just across the valley" might be.

"Oh, about a mile, maybe a little bit less."

Standish halted his pint before his lips. "And you say you saw something. From that distance?"

Knightly glanced at his wife, then said, "Well, it wasn't hard to miss..."

A helicopter, Standish thought, his imagination getting the better of him. A hot-air balloon?

"At first I thought it was a shooting star," Knightly said. "I see them all the time, but not quite that early. But this star just went on and on, dropping towards the earth. I thought at first it was a beam bringing the returnees home, but it wasn't heading for the Station."

Standish nodded, wondering where this was leading. "Where did it fall?"

Ben Knightly shrugged his big shoulders. "It went down behind the trees next to the Roberts' house."

Standish looked at Lincoln. "A meteorite? I'm not very up on these things."

"Meteorites usually come in at an acute angle," the ferryman said, "not straight down."

"I thought I was seeing things," Knightly said. "But when I read about the murder..."

Standish shook his head. "I really don't see how..." Then he recalled the melted patch outside the back door of the farmhouse.

The conversation moved on to other things, after that. A little later they were joined by more people, friends of Lincoln. Standish recognised an implant doctor from Bradley General, Khalid Azzam, and Jeffrey Morrow and Dan Chester, another ferryman.

They were pleasant people, Standish thought. They went out of their way to make him feel part of the group. He bought a round and settled in for the evening. The ferrymen talked about why they had chosen their profession, and perhaps inevitably the topic of conversation soon moved round to the Kethani.

"Come on, you two," Elisabeth said to Richard and Dan, playfully. "You come into contact with returnees every day. They must say something about the Kethani homeworld?"

Lincoln smiled. "It's strange, but they don't. They say very little. They talk about the rehabilitation process in the domes, conducted by humans, and then what they call 'instructions', lessons in Zen-like contemplation, again taught by humans."

Dan Chester said, "They don't meet any Kethani, or leave the domes. The view through the domes is one of rolling hills and vales-probably not what the planet looks like at all."

Standish looked around the group. They were all implanted. "Have you ever," he said, marshalling his thoughts, "had any doubts about the motives of the Kethani?"