“There is?”
“The killer was always in the house, concealed somewhere. He came before the snow fell and hid himself. Then he emerged, crept through the house to the door, stepped outside and knocked.”
“But that’d mean…”
Standish nodded. “If I’m right, then he’s still in there.”
“What do you think?” Lincoln asked. “Should we go in?”
In the old days, before the Kéthani, he would not have risked it. Now, with death no longer the threat it used to be, he didn’t think twice.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They returned to the front gate and climbed over. Standish led the way, high-stepping through the deep snow.
He had the sudden feeling of being involved in one of those Golden Age whodunits he’d devoured as a teenager, stories of ingenious murders carried out with devious cunning and improbable devices.
The front door was unlocked. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, Standish carefully turned the handle and pushed open the door. He led the way to the lounge.
Sarah Roberts lay on her back before the flickering vid-screen. The earlier image of her, Standish thought, had done nothing to convey her beauty. She was slim and blonde, her face ethereally beautiful. Like an angel, he thought.
They moved into the big, terracotta-tiled kitchen and checked the room thoroughly. They found the entrance to a small cellar and descended cautiously. The cellar was empty. Next they returned to the kitchen and moved into the adjacent dining room, but again found nothing.
“Upstairs?” Lincoln said.
Standish nodded. He led the way, climbing the wide staircase in silence. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, two bare and unoccupied, the third furnished with a single bed. They went through them from top to bottom. He was aware of the steady pounding of his heart as Standish pulled aside curtains and opened wardrobes. Last of all they checked the converted attic, spartanly furnished like the rest of the bedrooms, and just as free of lurking gunmen.
“Clean as a whistle,” Lincoln said as they made their way downstairs.
“I wish we’d found the killer,” Standish muttered. “I don’t like the alternative.” What was the alternative, he wondered? An eerie, impossible murder in a house surrounded by snow…
They entered the lounge. Lincoln knelt beside the body, reached out, and touched the woman’s implant.
Years ago, before the Kéthani, Standish had seen any number of bodies during the course of a working week, and he had never really become accustomed, or desensitised, to the fact that these once living people had been robbed of existence.
Now, when he did occasionally come across a corpse in the line of duty, he was immediately struck by the same feeling of futile waste and tragedy—only to be brought up short with the realisation that now, thanks to the Kéthani, the dead would be granted new life.
Lincoln looked up at him, his expression stricken. “Christ, Doug. This isn’t right.”
Standish felt his stomach turn. “What?”
Lincoln slumped back against the wall. Standish could see that he was sweating. “Her implant’s dead.”
“But I thought you said… you received the signal at the Station, right?”
Lincoln nodded. “It was the initial signal indicating that the subject had died.”
“So it should still be working?”
“Of course. It should be emitting a constant pulse.” He shook his head. “Look, this has never happened before. It’s unknown. These things just don’t pack up. They’re Kéthani technology.”
“Maybe it was one of those false implants? Don’t people with objections to the Kéthani sometimes have them?”
Lincoln waved. “Sarah worked for the Kéthani, Doug. And anyway, it was working. I saw the signal myself. Now the damned thing’s dead.”
Standish stared down at the woman, a wave of nausea overcoming him. He was struck once more by her attenuated Nordic beauty, and he was sickened by the thought that she would never live again. Amanda would have called him a sexist bastard: as if the tragedy were any the greater for the woman being beautiful.
“Can’t something be done?”
Lincoln lifted his shoulders in a hopeless shrug. “I don’t honestly know. The device needs to be active in the minutes immediately after the subject’s death, in order to begin the resurrection process. Maybe the techs at the Station might be able to do something. Like I said, this has never happened before.”
The room was hot, suffocatingly so. Standish moved to a window at the back of the room and was about to open it when he saw something through the glass.
He stepped from the lounge and into the kitchen. The back door was open a few inches. He crossed to it and, with his handkerchief, eased it open a little further and peered out.
The snow on the path directly outside the door had been melted in a circle perhaps a couple of metres across, revealing a stone-flagged path and a margin of lawn. The snow began again immediately beyond the melt, but there was no sign of footprints or any other tracks.
He returned to the lounge. Lincoln was on his mobile, evidently talking to someone at the Onward Station. “And there’s nothing at your end, either? Okay. Look, get a tech down here, fast.”
Standish crossed the room and stood before the big picture window, staring out at the darkening land with his back to the corpse. He really had no wish to look upon the remains of Sarah Roberts. Her reflection, in the glass, struck him as unbearably poignant, even more angelic as it seemed to float, ghost-like and evanescent, above the floor.
Lincoln joined him. “They’re sending someone down to look at the implant.”
Standish nodded. “The scene-of-crime team should be here any minute.” He glanced at the ferryman. “You didn’t hear her visitor’s voice when she returned from answering the door?”
“Nothing. I was aware that there was someone in the room by Sarah’s attitude. She seemed eager to end the call. But I didn’t see or hear anyone else.”
“Have you any idea which door she answered, front or back?”
Lincoln turned and looked at the vid-screen. “Let’s see, she was facing the screen, and she moved off to the left—so she must have answered the back door.”
That would fit with the door being ajar—but what of the melted patch?
“What kind of person was she? Popular? Boyfriend, husband?”
Lincoln shrugged. “I didn’t really know her. Station gossip was that she was a bit of a cold fish. Remote. Kept herself to herself. Didn’t make friends. She wasn’t married, and as far as I know she didn’t have a partner.”
“What was her job at the Station?”
“Well, she was designated a liaison officer, but to be honest I don’t exactly know what that entailed. I kept her up to date with the dead I delivered and the returnees, but I don’t know what she did with the information. She worked with Masters, the Station Director. He’d know more than me.”
“How long had she been at the Station?”
“Two or three months. But before that she’d worked at others up and down the country, so I heard.”
Standish nodded. “I’m just going to take another look around. I’ll be down when the scene-of-crime people turn up.”
He left the lounge and climbed the stairs again. He stood in the doorway of the only furnished bedroom and took in the bed—a single bed, which struck him as odd—and the bedside table with nothing upon it.
He moved to the bathroom and scanned the contents: a big shower stall, a Jacuzzi in the corner, plush white carpet… He stared around the room, trying to fathom precisely why he had the subtle feeling that something was not quite right. It was more a vague sensation than anything definite.