Manhattan in Reverse (7 page)

TWO

MANHATTAN CITY AD 1853

It was late afternoon as the SST came in to land at Newark aerodrome. The sun was low in the sky, sending out a red gold light to soak the skyscrapers. I pressed my face to the small port, eager for the sight. The overall impression was one of newness. Under such a light it appeared as though the buildings had just been erected. They were pristine, flawless.

Then we cruised in over the field’s perimeter, and the low commercial buildings along the side of the runway obscured the view. I shuffled my papers into my briefcase as we taxied to the reception building. I’d spent the three-hour flight over the Atlantic re-reading all the principal reports and interviews, refreshing my memory of the case. For some reason the knowledge lessened any feeling of comfort. The memories were all too clear now: the cold night, the blood-soaked body. Francis was missing from the investigation now, dead these last five years. It was he, I freely admit, who had given me a degree of comfort in tackling the question of who had killed poor Justin Ascham Raleigh. Always the old
missus dominicus
had exuded the air of conviction, the epitome of an irresistible force. It would be his calm persistence that would unmask the murderer, I’d always known and accepted that. Now the task was mine alone.

I emerged from the plane’s walkway into the reception lounge. Neill Heller Caesar was waiting to greet me. His physical appearance had changed little, as I suppose had mine. Only our styles were different; the fifties had taken on the air of a colourful radical period that I wasn’t altogether happy with. Neill Heller Caesar wore a white suit with flares that covered his shoes. His purple and green cheesecloth shirt had rounded collars a good five inches long. And his thick hair was waved, coming down below his shoulders. Tiny gold-rimmed amber sunglasses were perched on his nose.

He recognized me immediately, and shook my hand. ‘Welcome to Manhattan,’ he said.

‘Thank you. I wish it was under different circumstances.’

He prodded the sunglasses back up his nose. ‘For you, of course. For myself, I’m quite glad you’re here. You’ve put one of my charges in the clear.’

‘Yes. And thank you for the co-operation.’

‘A pleasure.’

We rode a limousine over one of the bridges into the city itself. I complimented him on the height of the buildings we were approaching. Manhattan was, after all, a Caesar city.

‘Inevitable,’ he said. ‘The population in America’s northern continent is approaching one and a half billion – and that’s just the official figure. The only direction left is up.’

We both instinctively looked at the limousine’s sunroof.

‘Speaking of which: how much longer?’ I asked.

He checked his watch. ‘They begin their descent phase in another five hours.’

The limousine pulled up outside the skyscraper which housed the Caesar family legal bureau in Manhattan. Neill Heller Caesar and I rode the lift up to the seventy-first floor. His office was on the corner of the building, its window walls giving an unparalleled view over ocean and city alike. He sat behind his desk, a marble-topped affair of a stature equal to the room as a whole, watching me as I gazed out at the panorama.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘You win. I’m impressed.’ The sun was setting, and in reply the city lights were coming on, blazing forth from every structure.

He laughed softly. ‘Me too, and I’ve been here fifteen years now. You know they’re not even building skyscrapers under a hundred floors any more. Another couple of decades and the only time you’ll see the sun from the street will be a minute either side of noon.’

‘Europe is going the same way. Our demographics are still top weighted, so the population rise is slower. But not by much. Something is going to have to give eventually. The Church will either have to endorse contraception, or the pressure will squeeze us into abandoning our current restrictions.’ I shuddered. ‘Can you imagine what a runaway expansion and exploitation society would be like?’

‘Unpleasant,’ he said flatly. ‘But you’ll never get the Borgias out of the Vatican.’

‘So they say.’

Neill Heller Caesar’s phone rang. He picked it up and listened for a moment. ‘Antony is on his way up.’

‘Great.’

He pressed a button on his desk, and a large wall panel slid to one side. It revealed the largest TV screen I’d ever seen. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep the Prometheus broadcast on,’ he said. ‘We’ll mute the sound.’

‘Please do. Is that thing colour?’ Our family channel had only just begun to broadcast in the new format. I hadn’t yet availed myself of a compatible receiver.

His smile was the same as any boy given a new football to play with. ‘Certainly is. Twenty-eight inch diameter, too – in case you’re wondering.’

The screen lit up with a slightly fuzzy picture. It showed an external camera view, pointing along the fuselage of the
Prometheus
, where the silver grey moon hung over it. Even though it was eight years since the first manned spaceflight, I found it hard to believe how much progress the Joint Families Astronautics Agency had made. Less than five hours now, and a man would set foot on the moon!

The office door opened and Antony Caesar Pitt walked in. He had done well for himself over the intervening years, rising steadily up through his family’s legal offices. Physically, he’d put on a few pounds, but it hardly showed. The biggest change was a curtain of hair, currently held back in a ponytail. There was a mild frown on his face to illustrate his disapproval at being summoned without explanation. As soon as he saw me the expression changed to puzzlement, then enlightenment.

‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘You were one of the Raleigh representatives assigned to Justin’s murder. Edward, isn’t it?’

‘That’s helpful,’ I said.

‘In what way?’

‘You have a good memory. I need that right now.’

He gave Neill Heller Caesar a quick glance. ‘I don’t believe this. You’re here to ask me questions about Justin again, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘For Mary’s sake! It’s been twenty-one years.’

‘Yes, twenty-one years, and he’s still just as dead.’

‘I appreciate that. I’d like to see someone brought to justice as much as you. But the Oxford police found nothing. Nothing! No motive, no enemy. They spent weeks trawling through every tiny little aspect of his life. And with you applying pressure they were thorough, believe me. I should know, with our gambling debt I was the prime suspect.’

‘Then you should be happy to hear, you’re not any more. Something’s changed.’

He flopped down into a chair and stared at me. ‘What could possibly have changed?’

‘It’s a new forensic technique.’ I waved a hand at the television set. ‘Aeroengineering isn’t the only scientific discipline to have made progress recently, you know. The families have developed something we’re calling genetic fingerprinting. Any cell with your DNA in it can now be positively identified.’

‘Well good and fabulous. But what the hell has it got to do with me?’

‘It means I personally am now convinced you were at the Westhay that night. You couldn’t have murdered Justin.’

‘The Westhay.’ He murmured the name with an almost sorrowful respect. ‘I never went back. Not after that. I’ve never played cards since, never placed a bet. Hell of a way to get cured.’ He cocked his head to one side, looking up at me. ‘So what convinced you?’

‘I was there at the club the following morning. I found a cigar butt in the rubbish. Last month we ran a genetic fingerprint test on the saliva residue, and cross-referenced it with your blood sample. It was yours. You were there that night.’

‘Holy Mary! You kept a cigar butt for twenty-one years?’

‘Of course. And the blood, as well. It’s all stored in a cryogenic vault now along with all the other forensic samples from Justin’s room. Who knows what new tests we’ll develop in future.’

Antony started laughing. There was a nervous edge to it. ‘I’m in the clear. Shit. So how does this help you? I mean, I’m flattered that you’ve come all this way to tell me in person, but it doesn’t change anything.’

‘On the contrary. Two very important factors have changed thanks to this. The number of suspects is smaller, and I can now trust what you tell me. Neill here has very kindly agreed that I can interview you again. With your permission, of course.’

This time the look Antony flashed at the family representative was pure desperation. ‘But I don’t have anything new to tell you. Everything I knew I told the police. Those interviews went on for
days
.’

‘I know. I spent most of last week reading through the transcripts again.’

‘Then you know there’s nothing I can add.’

‘Our most fundamental problem is that we never managed to establish a motive. I believe it must originate from his personal or professional life. The murder was too proficient to have been the result of chance. You can give me the kind of access I need to Justin’s life to go back and examine possible motives.’

‘I’ve given you access, all of it.’

‘Maybe. But everything you say now has more weight attached. I’d like you to help.’

‘Well sure. That’s if you’re certain you can trust me now. Do you want to wire me up to a polygraph as well?’

I gave Neill Heller Caesar a quick glance. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

Antony caught it. ‘Oh great. Just bloody wonderful. Okay. Fine. Ask me what the hell you want. And for the record, I’ve always answered honestly.’

‘Thank you. I’d like to start with the personal aspect. Now, I know you were asked a hundred times if you’d seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. Possibly some way he acted out of character, right?’

‘Yes. Of course. There was nothing.’

‘I’m sure. But what about afterwards, when the interviews were finished, when the pressure had ended. You must have kept on thinking, reviewing all those late night conversations you had over cards and a glass of wine. There must have been something he said, some trivial
non sequitur
, something you didn’t bother going back to the police with.’

Antony sank down deeper into his chair, resting a hand over his brow as weariness claimed him. ‘Nothing,’ he whispered. ‘There was nothing he ever said or did that was out of the ordinary. We talked about everything men talk about together, drinking, partying, girls, sex, sport; we told each other what we wanted to do when we left Oxford, all the opportunities our careers opened up for us. Justin was a template for every family student there. He was almost a stereotype, for Mary’s sake. He knew what he wanted; his field was just taking off, I mean . . .’ He waved at the TV screen. ‘Can you get anything more front line? He was going to settle down with Bethany, have ten kids, and gaze at the stars for the rest of his life. We used to joke that by the time he had his three hundredth birthday he’d probably be able to visit them, all those points of light he stared at through a telescope. There was
nothing
unusual about him. You’re wasting your time with this, I wish you weren’t, I really do. But it’s too long ago now, even for us.’

‘Can’t blame me for trying,’ I said with a smile. ‘We’re not Shorts, for us time is always relevant, events never diminish no matter how far away you move from them.’

‘I’m not arguing,’ he said weakly.

‘So what about his professional life? His astronomy?’

‘He wasn’t a professional, he was still a student. Every week there was something that would excite him; then he’d get disappointed, then happy again, then disappointed . . . That’s why he loved it.’

‘We know that Justin had some kind of project or theory which he was working on. Nobody seemed to know what it was. It was too early to take it to his professor, and we couldn’t find any notes relating to it. All we know is that it involved some kind of spectography. Did he ever let slip a hint of it to you?’

‘His latest one?’ Antony closed his eyes to assist his recall. ‘Very little. I think he mentioned once he wanted to review pictures of supernovae. What for, I haven’t got the faintest idea. I don’t even know for certain if that was the new idea. It could have been research for anything.’

‘Could be,’ I agreed. ‘But it was a piece of information I wasn’t aware of before. So we’ve accomplished something today.’

‘You call that an accomplishment?’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘I’d love to know what you call building the Channel Tunnel.’

My smile was pained. Our family was the major partner in that particular venture. I’d even been involved in the preliminary negotiations. ‘A nightmare. But we’ll get there in the end.’

‘Just like Justin’s murder?’

‘Yes.’

THREE

GANYMEDE AD 1920

My journey out to Jupiter was an astonishing experience. I’d been in space before, of course, visiting various low Earth orbit stations which are operated by the family, and twice to our moonbase. But even by current standards, a voyage to a gas giant was considered special.

I took a scramjet-powered spaceplane from Gibraltar spaceport up to Vespasian in its six-hundred-mile orbit. There wasn’t much of the original asteroid left now, just a ball of metal-rich rock barely half a mile across. Several mineral refineries were attached to it limpet-fashion, their fusion-reactor cooling fins resembling black peacock tails. In another couple of years it would be completely mined out, and the refineries would be manoeuvred to the new asteroids being eased into Earth orbit.