The Glass Devil

“Is she going to stay there?” Glen asked.

“Don’t know. But she’ll probably take a sedative. It won’t be possible to speak with her today.”

Irene didn’t know if it was her imagination, but she thought there was a note of satisfaction in Christian Lefevre’s voice.

Glen said, “Okay. Then we’ll interview you.”

That wasn’t what Lefevre had expected. His surprise was apparent. “Me? Why? I don’t know anything.”

“Maybe, but we still want to speak with you.”

“But I have a lot of work. . now, since Rebecka hasn’t been able to work for a while. . ”

“It won’t take long.”

Thompson was adamant. Lefevre shrugged his shoulders in a very French way and walked toward a closed door. “We can talk in here,” he said, opening the door and showing them into the room with a sweeping gesture.

It was a small kitchen that also contained an inviting sofa and chairs covered in soft black leather. A bright red rug covered part of the floor, a spot of color in the otherwise white and black room. The only wall decoration was an exquisite horsehead in red glazed ceramic.

“Coffee or tea?” Lefevre asked.

“Coffee,” Irene answered quickly before Glen had time to decline.

He had had a break at the hotel but she hadn’t, and now she was ready for coffee. Christian filled an electric kettle and turned it on. Irene realized too late that instant coffee was on its way. As long as it wasn’t decaf, it would suffice, she comforted herself.

Lefevre took his time, setting out plastic mugs, tea bags, sugar, milk, and Nescafe. When the water boiled and he had poured it into the mugs, he couldn’t stall any longer. He was forced to sit. There was no doubt that he didn’t like the situation.

Glen observed him closely before he asked, “Why don’t you want us to speak to Rebecka?”

Christian focused on his mug. The water, colored a golden brown from the contents of the tea bag, seemed like the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. It was a long time before he answered.

“I’m not trying to keep you from speaking with Rebecka.”

“Yes, you are.”

Christian fished out the tea bag and threw it into an empty mug in the middle of the table.

“Maybe you’re right. I want to protect her. She doesn’t have the strength even to think about what’s happened, not to mention talk about it. She gets sick if you even refer to. . what happened.”

“How long has she been sick?”

He quickly looked up but then looked away again. “What do you mean? Since the murders-”

“No. She was depressed before.”

“How do you-? September.”

“Has she out sick since September?”

“No. She has been able to work quite a bit. It’s been good for her, distracted her from sad thoughts and anguish. But sometimes she became unable. . Listen here, what does this have to do with the murders in Sweden?”

Irene interjected, “We don’t know. We’re looking for a motive. Did you ever meet Rebecka’s parents, or her brother?”

“No.”

“Did Rebecka say anything to you about someone in her family having been threatened?”

At first Christian looked surprised, then he said, vaguely, “No, she didn’t say anything. But wasn’t there something in the papers about a clue which led to Satanists?”

“The papers wrote that, yes. Has Rebecka said anything to you about Satanists?”

He sipped at the hot tea, while he appeared to be trying to remember.

“It was quite a while ago. Her father asked for her help in tracking Satanists via the Internet.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Rebecka mentioned it in the fall, saying that he’d asked a year before that. So, more than a year and a half ago.”

“And she never said anything to you about personally feeling threatened?”

“No. Never,” he said firmly.

“Did she say or do anything unusual at the beginning of last week?”

“You mean before the murders were discovered?”

“Yes. On Monday or Tuesday.”

“No. Everything was normal. Both of us worked all day Monday. It was probably a bit too much for Rebecka. She went to bed early, around five thirty, because she had a headache. I went to Shakespeare. That’s the pub on the corner. A group of us usually meet there on Mondays and put together our betting pool for the week.”

“What did you do afterward?”

“I went home.”

“Did you see Rebecka?”

“No. She had gone to her place.”

Glen couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Don’t you live together in this house?”

“Yes, and no. I’ve owned the house next door for some time, the one which now has a blue door. My office was located on the ground floor and I lived on the two other floors. The office felt too small, and I was looking for a new location when this house became available. I bought it and offered Rebecka the same living arrangement as I have, including breaking through the wall on the first floor and expanding the office. As you can see, it worked out very well.”

“So you don’t live together as a couple?”

Christian Lefevre glared angrily at Glen. “No. And I don’t see how that has anything to do with your investigation.”

“It does. Rebecka is the only surviving member of the Schyttelius family. Everything which affects her life is important to the investigation,” Glen told him.

It wasn’t really true that everything was important, thought Irene, but it quieted the Frenchman, if he truly was a Frenchman.

Lefevre squirmed in his chair. Finally, he said, “If there is nothing else, I’d actually like to get back to work.”

“I’m glad you said that. What exactly is your work? Are there other employees?” Glen asked.

Christian sighed heavily before he answered. “Here, in London, it’s just Rebecka and myself. Andy St. Clair has moved up to Edinburgh and works from there. But he has a lot of other businesses to run as well. So it’s mostly Rebecka and I who work together. We take on different projects from companies and organizations that deal with computers and networks. Right now, we’re working on exponential and open networks. We look at security questions. Our client is a secret, but I can reveal that there’s a military interest in this. The risk that terrorist groups could completely paralyze the Internet is actually quite high.”

“But you can’t paralyze the whole Internet! There are millions of Web sites that would have to be destroyed,” Irene objected.

“Not at all. It’s quite simple. The Internet is an open network. It’s not sensitive to occasional problems, but it’s sensitive to attacks against the important computers and servers that make up the backbone of the system. Through an attack directed at these servers, the interconnected Internet could be reduced to isolated islands.”

“I’ve never heard that,” Glen said. “What are exproportional networks or whatever they’re called?”

Sincere interest and curiosity could be heard in his voice. Christian had relaxed as he spoke about the Internet. Apparently, he felt much more comfortable in cyberspace. “Exponential networks don’t have any servers. All the computers are equally strongly linked to each other, peer-to-peer. This makes the network sensitive to occasional problems but protects it against attack.”

“Does Rebecka also work on these things?”

“Yes. We’re specialists on everything that has to do with different networks, where one’s own organization’s competence isn’t enough.”

“Is there a lot of money in this sort of thing?”