The Happier Dead (20 page)

“Why?”

“To satisfy my curiosity.”

John shook his head.

“He’s no longer staying at St Margaret’s.”

“Why did he leave?”

“Because he wanted to and there was no reason to stop him. If you must know I suspect he’s one of the people we may have to thank for the circus outside.”

“One of Nottingham’s competitors?”

“Yes. He works at another bio company.”

“What does he do?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“What’s his name?”

“Chris Rajaram.”

The answer shocked Oates into a momentary silence. He had pushed the events of the afternoon to the back of his mind, but the mention of the name of Hector’s employer created a sudden nexus. Could this Chris Rajaram have killed Prudence Egwu in an effort to conceal the theft of his accumulated research? For a moment, he had the unpleasant sensation that he was shaping external reality, that the link he had forged in his mind had somehow infected the real world.

“I want to speak to him,” Oates said.

He and John stared at one another. Oates could feel an old alliance on the point of dissolution. They had worked together on and off for the best part of a decade. Though John could be supercilious and sarcastic he was basically a decent man. They had always held one another in mutual respect. But Oates could sense in both of them a reckless desire to tear down that relationship, and to throw up in its place a new and profound enmity. What was the reason? Standing there in the maintenance rooms of the Great Spa, it felt like nothing so much as a fascination with what might happen. It was kin to the sensation that seized Oates at the top of high buildings, the whisper of how easy it would be to step into the air. Finally John looked away and shook his head.

“Speak to him then, hear the story for yourself. But I want you back up here before tonight, I want Ali charged and taken down to London. We’re going to need every man we have on the streets tonight. The Commissioner has cancelled leave and men are being bussed in from everywhere from Cornwall to Yorkshire.”

“And if I’m not satisfied?”

“If you’re not satisfied, Detective Chief Inspector, I will want to know why. So I know what to tell my own superiors.”

Oates thought again of Minor’s last words to him in the pub: “It’s you as should watch your back!”

“Did you ever fancy having the Treatment yourself, sir?” he asked.

Quite unconsciously, the men had squared up to one another. Oates looked down, and noticed their fists were closed. He thought for a moment he had gone too far. He hadn’t actually accused a senior officer of corruption, but he had come as close as made no difference. To his surprise, a grin spread across John’s face; not the ironic smile which was its habitual resident, but an expression broad and boyish.

“I rather think one lifetime is enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“One can seem like a lot.”

There was a knock on the door, and the porter was waiting outside to escort them back to St Margaret’s. The two of them took the launch back along the river. This time the beauty of the scenery held no distractions, and Oates was grateful for the sound of the engine on the way to the main body of the spa. It removed any obligation to speak. He couldn’t be certain of anything in this place. It interfered with the frequencies of his self-belief. His nose had got bunged up in the summer fields. Was he being as perverse as John’s exasperation implied? He had no particular wish to help Ali after his behaviour in the interview room, but his desire to see the right man punished penetrated deeper than personal prejudice. If this Chris Rajaram was involved in the murder, Oates would run him to ground.

Was Ali clever enough to be double-bluffing? That would have been an incredibly dangerous tactic to adopt, but if he had been caught virtually red-handed perhaps it had seemed the only option. Perhaps he even planned to revoke his confession at some point prior to the trial, claiming he had been paid, but was unable to identify the parties who had made the offer. If that was the plan, a testimony from an investigating officer to the effect that he had doubted the man’s guilt to the point of defying a superior would be a valuable thing. Oates tried to remember the exact words he had used in the interview room, and how useful they would be to a defence team trying to take that line.

The doubts multiplied inside him like the worlds inside opposed mirrors. He clung to the idea of interviewing Chris Rajaram. His confusion could not be complete, so long as there was an identifiable gap in his knowledge still to be filled. With that interview outstanding, the crisis of a decision on whether or not to charge Ali Farooz could be postponed.

He and John barely said goodbye to one another when the launch nosed back into port. There were things they needed to settle between them, whether John was intending to stay, how many men might be needed for operations in London, but the inertia of the silence proved impossible to disturb. There were other conversations to be had within St Margaret’s, but Oates found he could not face them. His overriding desire was to fix in place the guilt or innocence of Ali Farooz – not only for the purposes of his investigation, but for his own peace of mind.

Back outside the main gates, Oates’s car was where he had left it. The confrontation around the barrier seemed to have ended, but the flow of cars away from the tarmac and onto the grassy wasteland was gathering pace. All around the darkening fields, interior lights created warm little worlds where men and women huddled companionably in their car seats. In one or two places, he saw tents were mushrooming. It was if a travelling circus had descended on a village green, filling it up with lights and strangers, caravans and wonders and crime. It was nearing dusk when he turned the car, and he had the headlights on as he drove back into London. As before, he alone appeared to be travelling that way.

17:15 HOURS

THURSDAY 21 NOVEMBER

2035 (REAL WORLD)

C
HRIS
R
AJARAM HAD
certainly called Hector from the Great Spa shortly after the murder. Hector bothered Oates, because the boy was an incompetent. The idea that the head of a rich corporation would choose someone like him for industrial espionage just didn’t sit right. If that was what you wanted there were men in London who could get in and out of a house without leaving so much as the ghost of their breath on a windowpane.

The only advantage he could see in using Hector was that he was a male prostitute. A man in Prudence Egwu’s position would never report a crime in those circumstances. And that was the only possible explanation for employing Hector as the means of effecting the theft – the crime would go unreported. Seen in that light, the choice of Hector was strategically brilliant. Chris would at one stroke have secured his prize, and protected himself from the possibility of investigation.

But why bother going to such lengths if you were going to stab the man to death? It would have been enough to accomplish the theft to know Prudence Egwu was staying in the Great Spa, and that his house would therefore be empty. In fact, if Chris was after the research papers which Mr Egwu had accumulated, the murder would have been a huge inconvenience – he must have known that with Prudence dead the police would eventually search his house, and might impound and examine any papers they found there. The fact he had contacted Hector directly was proof of a plot disrupted. He had not profited from the murder, he had been forced to accelerate his plans because of it, and the bungled late night visit from Hector was the result.

Finally, there was the nature of the murder itself. Oates had watched those blows fall and retract on the screen of the Oracle. Oates had used a bayonet before; he knew how hard it was to get the blade back. The thing slipped in easy enough with a quick thrust the way it had in training, but the dummies had no ribcage, and the serrated blade of the knife got stuck. In the end he’d had to put his foot on the dead man’s shoulder. Whoever had killed Prudence Egwu had done that thirty times. That wasn’t murder for profit. That was the fury of madness.

The offices of United Sciences were on the fifth floor of a building near the Old Bailey. His police pass got him into the underground carpark, where he changed between the doors of his car. The lift opened into a marble hall. He pushed open a set of glass swing doors etched with the company’s name and asked for Mr Rajaram at the front desk. He felt the receptionist’s manner tighten ever so slightly at the sight of the uniform, her spine straightening by a couple of degrees, her smile a few millimetres wider.

She asked his name, and Oates gave his name and rank. She asked if he had an appointment, and he shook his head. Her fingers paused for a moment over the computer in front of her, hovering in the air whilst she took in the uniform, the stance, the attitude which Oates had traipsed in from his long day of murders and gunfights. She excused herself for a moment, and conversed with someone on the other end of a telephone in a voice too low to catch. When she came back, she showed him to a seat, and told him someone would be down in a minute to collect him, and would he like tea or coffee?

Oates sat on the soft leather sofa in front of a vase filled with orchids. Beside him there were three men in suits with briefcases. They had been talking tactics when he came over, but his presence extinguished their enthusiasm.

On the wall of the reception room was a painting exactly like the one he had seen in Prudence Egwu’s townhouse. He cast about for something to distract him whilst he waited. There was a pile of broadsheet newspapers on the table in front of him, and he recognised the pink pages of the
Financial Times.
He picked it up, and immediately threw it back down. He crossed his legs, but the low seat was uncomfortable, and he slid forward on the shiny leather. Two of the businessmen beside him were studiously ignoring this display, and pretending to study laminated folders they had brought with them, but the third was watching Oates, his cheeks reddening in the silence.

“Anyway,” he began, speaking louder than he had been before Oates’s approach, “I think we should be pushing for full reliance. On the disclosure report.”

His companions started up from their folders. One of them muttered, “possibly, possibly,” and smiled in a placatory way before returning to the page. The speaker, however, was not so easily perturbed.

“It’s, what, a couple of million more in terms of exposure. And you’re not telling me they don’t have the insurance. If it’s a professional liability issue, they shouldn’t even be at the table. They shouldn’t even be in the room!”

“Well, we’ll find out when we see them.”

“Yes, but I think we have to be up front that this is a show-stopper. We won’t accept anything less…”

Oates plucked up the
Financial Times
from where he had thrown it, and spread it open on the table in front of him. He removed his gun from its holster, and checked the barrel, dirtied with the recent discharge. He disassembled the firing mechanism, laying out the pieces one after another on the spread newspaper. Each one made a muffled click on the glass beneath the paper as he set it down. He removed the small oilcloth he kept in a pouch by the solid gun housing, and laced it through the bore. He lifted it to his eye, and winked at the painting through the clean hole. The man continued to talk, but his eyes were watching the slow assemblage of lethal components spreading oil over the pages of the
FT.

Taking the gun apart helped Oates to calm his mind. He was so engrossed in the coming together of the gleaming gun, that he was startled to find the woman from the desk standing over him along with a slightly older lady in a skirt and blouse. The lawyers were gone. With a smile and a sweep of her hand, the receptionist passed him into the care of her elder. The latter introduced herself as Mr Rajaram’s personal assistant, and invited him to accompany her.

M
R
R
AJARAM WAS
concluding a meeting elsewhere in the building, and Oates had a few moments alone to take in his office. The family photographs faced outwards on the surface of the desk like a defensive pallisade, a protection against any questioning of this man’s practice or priorities. The wife was pretty, the children smiling, the frames plain and heavy silver. Mrs Rajaram was white, and a couple of inches taller than her husband, with the distant beauty of a fashion model. She had also undergone the Treatment, so that in the family portrait the couple looked like the older siblings of their own children.

The flat monitor of the computer was turned away from him, but Oates watched the screensaver photographs scrolling past in the reflection of the window behind the desk. One of them was taken in the interior of an epic church, the kind so big that the altar spreads tv screens like great wings on either side, filled with a twinned image of the pastor sweating in close-up. Another photograph showed Chris standing outside a hut on a dusty plain, his arms around two black men in khaki shirts. The black men were smiling. The images hung outside in the dark of the London evening. On the wall above the desk was a wooden cross. Oates had been waiting perhaps ten minutes when the smoked glass door behind him opened, and Chris Rajaram himself surfed in on a wave of business.

“Don’t get up, don’t get up! I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Inspector.”

“No problem. I was just admiring your office.”

“It’s a lovely view, isn’t it? We’re very lucky.”

“That’s something you don’t see much anymore,” he said, indicating the cross.

“Oh, you’d be surprised. The churches are heaving, not just at cult but the Catholics, even dear old C of E.”

“Cult?”

“The Church of the Present Resurrection. We like to call it cult, because everyone else does,” he laughed good-naturedly, and threw himself down into his chair with his arms behind his head.

“Isn’t that the group that believes that the Treatment comes from Jesus?”

“No, unfortunately not! My job would be a great deal easier if Jesus held the patents for the Treatment. The Treatment comes from Nottingham Biosciences, sadly. But we believe in the human face of God. God was made man, and there’s no reason that the beginnings of the afterlife should not also come through man. The Treatment is the beginning of His kingdom on earth, the first of the elect. The press has the tendency to pick up on the more fantastic elements of our faith. Personally I think it’s a lot less controversial than, say, cannibalism in the Catholic mass.”