“Hannah?” I said. She was silent, so I said again, “Hannah…”
The even sound of her respiration, the shallow rise and fall of her chest in the ring-light, told me she was sleeping.
I lay awake for a long time, considering Dortmund’s final tirade. I dismissed a lot of what he’d said as no more than vindictiveness: there might have been a kernel of truth in some of his insights, but they were exaggerated out of all recognition.
What he’d said about Hannah, however, made me wonder. It was almost as if he were unable to discern the workings of her mind, for some reason, and therefore accused her of concealment. Then I recalled what he’d said earlier about her gemstone…
I must have fallen asleep eventually, as I awoke some time later with a pressing
need to visit the loo. On the way back from the en suite bathroom, I moved to the open doors and looked out. The far-away straits were silvered with ring-light and the land was black with night; the scene resembled an old-fashioned photographic negative.
I was about to return to bed when I noticed movement down below. I stepped forward and peered. Hawk, fully dressed, crossed the patio and leaned against the stone balustrade, staring across the lawn.
I wondered if he, too, was finding sleep hard in the aftermath of Dortmund’s petty invective.
I stepped inside, locked the doors, returned to bed and eventually slept.
At some point I woke again, disturbed by Hannah as she rolled out of bed. Dawn light filled the room. I dozed in that realm between sleep and wakefulness when lucid dreams take on the fidelity of reality. I saw Hannah waving goodbye, tearfully, as she moved ever further away from me.
I woke up and reached out. The bed was empty.
When she returned, at last, I pulled her to me and hugged her like a needful child.
Later◦– and it must have been an hour or two at least, as full sunlight now exploded into the room◦– we were awoken by an insistent knocking on the door.
I came awake slowly, rolled out of bed and pulled on some clothes.
Maddie and Matt stood side by side in the passageway when I opened the door. They wore the blank, anaesthetised expressions of people in shock.
“What?” I said
“It’s Dortmund,” Maddie said at last.
“Dortmund?”
She nodded. “He’s dead.”
— SIX —
Hannah joined me and we made our way downstairs. Hawk and Kee were already there, standing beside the open door to the lounge. They were holding hands and staring silently into the room. The Ambassador, Heanor, was beside them, peering into the lounge.
I said, “What happened? Who found him?”
“I did, Mr Conway,” Heanor said. “I rose early, as is my custom. The door was open. When I looked in, I saw…”
I looked into the room.
Dortmund was slumped forward in his armchair, the front of his white suit stained black.
I led the way into the room. Hannah reached out to me. “Be careful. Don’t touch anything. Has anyone called the police?”
Maddie nodded. “As soon as Heanor woke us,” she said. “I contacted your people in Mackinley. They said they’d have a team up here in ten minutes.”
I stopped beside Dortmund’s chair, in exactly the same position as when I’d stood over him the night before.
From his chest projected the hleth barb. I looked up, staring around at the shocked expressions of my friends. “Who the hell could have done this?” I said.
Hawk held my gaze. “After what the bastard said last night,” he said, “any one of us.”
I found myself laughing, more with macabre fear than humour. “I must admit I felt like—”
Hannah said, “We all did, at some point. But I don’t think any of you would…” She stopped, then said, “Where’s Fhen?”
I looked at the Ambassador, as if he might know the whereabouts of his compatriot.
“He was not in his room when I went to find him,” Heanor said. He carved a gesture. “But you cannot be imputing…?” he said, staring at Hannah. “The taking of life, even alien life, is proscribed on my homeworld.”
“But we’re not on your homeworld,” I pointed out.
The alien blinked with what looked like very human surprise, but for all I knew might have indicated intense hatred. He said, “Forgive my grasp of your language, Mr Conway. What I intended to mean was that on my world, murder is proscribed. We Elan do not kill anything.”
I said, “Then it’s either one of us, or someone who entered the house during the night.”
The Elan said, “The latter is impossible, Mr Conway. All the exterior doors are locked, and the windows likewise.”
I recalled seeing Hawk on the patio: perhaps he’d left the door open when he returned inside, unwittingly allowing the killer into the building?
He caught my glance and said, “I stepped out for a breath of air around four this morning. I was out there perhaps ten minutes, the door open behind me. I didn’t see anyone enter, and I locked the door when I came back inside.”
Maddie said, wide-eyed and incredulous, “So if it wasn’t Fhen, then…”
“Then it must have been one of us,” Hannah finished.
I experienced a sickening sensation in my chest, like nausea.
The ensuing silence was interrupted by the diminuendo of a jet engine as a police flier came down on the front lawn. I guessed I was not alone in feeling relief, and not a little apprehension, at their arrival.
Hannah let the team into the house and explained the situation. We were ushered from the lounge and kept in an adjacent room, under the watchful eye of a uniformed officer, while the scene-of-crime team moved into the lounge and set up their apparatus.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
Hannah said, “We’ll be questioned individually. I suspect we’ll be released then, with binding conditions, and asked to report to the Mackinley police HQ until the investigation is closed.”
I looked around at my friends, unable to believe that any one of them would have killed Dortmund, no matter how strong the provocation.
Matt and Maddie stood by the window in murmured conversation. Hawk stood before a shelf of old-fashioned books, scanning the titles, while Kee sat cross-legged on the floor, head bowed, eyes closed.
The Elan Ambassador sat on a chesterfield by the window, upright and silent.
Hannah curled beside me on a lounger, holding my hand. “I don’t believe this,” I said. “I curse the day the bastard set foot on Chalcedony.” I laughed bitterly. “And to be honest, I don’t feel one iota of regret about his death.”
She squeezed my fingers. “For what it’s worth, David, nor do I. Dortmund was a bastard.” She shook her head. “Anyway, for all the Elan’s protestations that his people don’t kill, I suspect that Fhen did it.”
The door opened and the investigating officer showed his head. “Lieutenant van Harben?”
She rose and left the room with the officer. She was gone perhaps twenty minutes, and when she returned I had no time to ask about the interrogation. “Mr David Conway, if you’d care to come with me…”
The interview was conducted in a sunlit front room, with three officers and a recording device present. This was the first time I’d been so much as spoken to by investigating officers, and I felt an odd sense of guilt◦– especially when it emerged that I was the last person among all the guests last night to see Darius Dortmund alive.
“And did you or anyone else present have any reason to wish Mr Dortmund dead?”
I stared at the array of monitoring devices aimed my way. The question was so crass that I could only assume it was intentionally so, in the hope that the monitors would pick up something incriminating in my response.
I said, honestly, “None of my friends had any reason to kill Dortmund.”