"Even if it had been an alternative past you saw, how could you explain finding the knife where you did unless Beswick put it there?"
"Because another student used the retrospective neurohormone and saw where the alternative Beswick put it. Does that make any sense?"
"Not much. If alternative pasts existed, why would you always see just that one?"
Eleanor let out a long breath. "Haven't got a clue."
"Now do you see why they stopped fitting people with glands?" Gabriel asked evilly. She poured some more orange juice out of a jug, filling a second glass and handing it to Eleanor.
"Yes. Thanks." Ice cubes bobbed about as she took a gulp. "I'm going down to the local newspaper office. It's the one which is most likely to have a record of anything happening at Launde Abbey. So we thought it would be best to give our search request the old personal touch just to make sure it's done properly. Do you want to come?"
Gabriel swirled the juice and slush round the bottom of her glass, staring at it morosely. "Yes. Morgan won't be home for hours."
Eleanor got to her feet and stood with her hands resting on the wrought-iron railings. The Welland was a vast light-brown torrent obliterating the floor of the gentle valley, almost five hundred metres wide. Cobweb ribbons of dirty foam swirling across the surface showed her how fast the current was flowing. It couldn't even be said to have burst its banks; there were no banks, not any more. The floodwater had swept them away years ago, as it had Stamford's ancient stone bridge and all of the town's riverside buildings. During the summer, the Wetland died down to a slim silver contrail; and the mudflats on either side turned as hard as steel. The kids used it as the world's greatest skateboard park.
"You get on well with Morgan, don't you?" There had been a time when she thought Gabriel wanted Greg. It was only after she met Teddy that she realized all the ex-military people shared a strange kind of bond, almost a brotherhood.
"We fit well," Gabriel said. "He's hopeless around the house, of course, so I'm needed here as well as in my advisory capacity to Event Horizon's security division."
Which was as close as Gabriel would ever come to voicing real feelings. "I'm glad."
"How about you and Greg? When are we going to see some little Mandels?"
"The farmhouse is more or less in order, and we've got all the groves planted now. It'll mean a long summer with nothing much to do."
"Greg did all right with you, better than most of us anyway." Eleanor turned. Gabriel was staring moodily into the bottom of her glass.
"Thank you."
Gabriel grunted and swallowed the last of her drink.
The hardliner insisted on walking into town with them. His name was Joey Foulkes, and Gabriel treated him as if he were a small anxious puppy. He accepted it affably enough, grinning at Eleanor when Gabriel's back was turned.
The Stamford and Rutland Mercury office was a five-minute walk from the house, situated in one of the older sections of the town, Sheepmarket Square, a small cobbled square just above the river. The offices must back on to the concrete reinforced flood embankment, Eleanor realized; on one side of the building a narrow road ran right down a slope into the surging water. A fragile looking red plastic fence had been thrown along the top, with a couple of council warning signs pinned to it. Four kids had ignored them to stand a metre above the river, chucking bottles and rocks into the water.
The building was made from pale ochre stone, like all the others in the heart of the town. The frontage was newer, a wall of copper-tinted glass showing misty outlines of an open-plan reception area behind. None of the furniture had been changed for years, and sunlight had bleached and cracked the wood varnish, the peacock-blue carpet was threadbare.
Eleanor got an I know you look from the girl behind the desk. Her name alone was enough to get them shown directly into the deputy editor's office.
Barry Simms was in his early forties, an obvious full-time data shuffler. Flesh was building up on his neck and cheeks, ginger hair had been arranged in an elaborate, but doomed, attempt to disguise its own thinness. He had a quiet almost weary voice as he introduced himself.
Eleanor put that down to ingrained resignation. At his age, if he hadn't already made it out of a provincial news office, he wasn't likely to now.
"It's not about our coverage, is it?" he asked Eleanor. "I mean you have to expect some interest if your husband is appointed to head the investigation over the heads of the local police."
"Detective Langley is, and remains, the investigating officer, Greg was never put in over him."
"Makes good copy though," Gabriel said smartly.
"There is the media ombudsman if you wish to complain," Simms said reproachfully. "I am obliged to provide you with his address. But I hardly think we were intrusive, certainly not after the pressure we were put under. Both our bank and the satellite company that handles our datatext transmission called us up to complain about unethical behaviour. They said we shouldn't hound you. I don't like having editorial policy dictated to me like that, Mrs Mandel."
"I think you and I are getting off on the wrong foot," Eleanor said.
"Guilty conscience," Gabriel muttered.
Eleanor gave her a hard stare. She rolled her eyes in defeat and folded her arms.
"I don't wish to complain," Eleanor said. "I would like the Mercury's assistance in a peripheral matter."
Simms perked up. "Is this official?"
"I'm a private citizen."
"So I can report what you say? Without any hassle?"
"I'll do you a deal, Mr Simms. You help me, and if it turns out to have any bearing on the Kitchener case, I will brief you ahead of any police statement. Interested?"
He stared at her for a moment; reporter's desire to know warring against having restrictions imposed. "All right," he said. "I thought it was all finished anyway. Nicholas Beswick did it."
"It looks pretty certain, yes."
"So what do you want from me?"
"A search through the newspaper's files. I want to know if there have been any other newsworthy incidents at Launde Abbey, specifically in the period between four and fifteen years ago."
Simms looked thoroughly disgruntled. "Typical of my luck. Mrs Mandel, if you had come in here asking for anything else we could have obliged. But that is out. Sorry."
"Your files can't be that confidential," she said. "I only want to see what was previously reported."
"It's not a problem with confidentiality. You don't understand. I want to help, but…" He waved a hand at the Marconi terminal on his desk. "We no longer have that data in our memory core."
"That seems very odd."
"Not really, just unfortunate. Look, we were an actual newspaper until 2005, black ink on real paper, then we switched to broadcasting on the local datatext channel, same as all the other regional newspapers. We leave features running for forty-eight hours, but the news items are updated every three hours if need be. It's a good system, any cybofax can receive it. We can turn over a lot of data, cover anything from stories like Edward Kitchener's murder to the results of village flower shows, and never have to worry about capacity the way they did with paper. Any conceivable piece of information which local people would be interested in is available. Naturally, with that volume of data, everything was stored in a lightware memory." His jaw tightened. "Then some bastard hotrod went and crashed it all when the PSP fell. They actually went and left a message which said it had been done because we were part of the Party's propaganda effort. Jesus, if they knew what we went through to get stuff past the PSP's editorial approval officer. We might not have been out there physically fighting the People's Constables, Mrs Mandel, but we did our bit. It's not bloody fair! Who the hell are they to sit in judgement?"