last words on somebody's answering machine, there's no reason -'
They listened in a tense silence as the tape played on through the entire message.
'That's the problem with crunch-heads - they have one great idea that actually works and then they expect you to carry on funding them for years while they sit and calculate the topographies of their navels. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to stop and close the boot properly. Won't be a moment.'
Next came the muffled bump of the telephone receiver being dropped on the passenger seat, and a few seconds later the sound of the car door being opened. In the meantime, the music from the car's sound system could be heard burbling away in the background.
A few seconds later still came the distant, muffled, but unmistakable double blam of a shotgun.
'Stop the tape,' said Gilks sharply and glanced at his watch. 'Three minutes and twenty-five seconds since he said it was 8.47.' He glanced up at Dirk again. 'Stay here. Don't move. Don't touch anything. I've made a note of the position of every particle of air in this room, so I shall know if you've been breathing.'
He turned smartly and left. Dirk heard him saying as he went down the stairs, 'Tuckett, get on to WayForward's office, get the details of Way's carphone, what number, which network…' The voice faded away downstairs.
Quickly Dirk twisted down the volume control on the hi-fi, and resumed playing the tape.
The music continued for a while. Dirk drummed his fingers in frustration. Still the music continued.
He flicked the Fast Forward button for just a moment. Still music.
It occurred to him that he was looking for something, but that he didn't know what. That thought stopped him in his tracks.
He was very definitely looking for something.
He very definitely didn't know what.
The realisation that he didn't know exactly why he was doing what he was doing suddenly chilled and electrified him. He turned slowly like a fridge door opening.
There was no one there, at least no one that he could see. But he knew the chill prickling through his skin and detested it above all things.
He said in a low savage whisper, 'If anyone can hear me, hear this.
My mind is my centre and everything that happens there is my responsibility. Other people may believe what it pleases them to believe, but I will do nothing without I know the reason why and know it clearly. If you want something then let me know, but do not you dare touch my mind.'
He was trembling with a deep and old rage. The chill dropped slowly and almost pathetically from him and seemed to move off into the room.
He tried to follow it with his senses, but was instantly distracted by a sudden voice that seemed to come at him on the edge of his hearing, on a distant howl of wind.
It was a hollow, terrified, bewildered voice, no more than an insubstantial whisper, but it was there, audible, on the telephoneanswering machine tape.
It said, 'Susan! Susan, help me! Help me for God's sake. Susan, I'm dead -'
Dirk whirled round and stopped the tape.
'I'm sorry,' he said under his breath, 'but I have the welfare of my client to consider.'
He wound the tape back a very short distance, to just before where the voice began, twisted the Record Level knob to zero and pressed Record. He left the tape to run, wiping off the voice and anything that might follow it. If the tape was going to establish the time of Gordon Way's death, then Dirk didn't want any embarrassing examples of Gordon speaking to turn up on the tape after that point, even if it was only to confirm that he was, in fact, dead.
There seemed to be a great eruption of emotion in the air near to him. A wave of something surged through the room, causing the furniture to flutter in its wake. Dirk watched where it seemed to go, towards a shelf near the door on which, he suddenly realised, stood Richard's own telephone-answering machine. The machine started to jiggle fitfully where it sat, but then sat still as Dirk approached it. Dirk reached out slowly and calmly and pushed the button which set the machine to Answer.
The disturbance in the air then passed back through the room to Richard's long desk where two old- fashioned rotary-dial telephones nestled among the piles of paper and micro floppy disks. Dirk guessed what would happen, but elected to watch rather than to intervene.
One of the telephone receivers toppled off its cradle. Dirk could hear the dialling tone. Then, slowly and with obvious difficulty, the dial began to turn. It moved unevenly round, further round, slower and slower, and then suddenly slipped back.
There was a moment's pause. Then the receiver rests went down and up again to get a new dialling tone. The dial began to turn again, but creaking even more fitfully than the last time.
Again it slipped back.
There was a longer pause this time, and then the entire process was repeated once more.
When the dial slipped back a third time there was a sudden explosion of fury - the whole phone leapt into the air and hurtled across the room. The receiver cord wrapped itself round an Anglepoise lamp on the way and brought it crashing down in a tangle of cables, coffee cups and floppy disks. A pile of books erupted off the desk and on to the floor.
The figure of Sergeant Gilks stood stony-faced in the doorway.
'I'm going to come in again,' he said, 'and when I do, I don't want to see anything of that kind going on whatsoever. Is that understood?'
He turned and disappeared.
Dirk leapt for the cassette player and hit the Rewind button. Then he turned and hissed at the empty air, 'I don't know who you are, but I can guess. If you want my help, don't you ever embarrass me like that again!'
A few moments later, Gilks walked in again. 'Ah, there you are,' he said.
He surveyed the wreckage with an even gaze. 'I'll pretend I can't see any of this, so that I won't have to ask any questions the answers to which would, I know, only irritate me.'
Dirk glowered.
In the moment or two of silence that followed, a slight ticking whirr could be heard which caused the sergeant to look sharply at the cassette player.
'What's that tape doing?'
'Rewinding.'
'Give it to me.'
The tape reached the beginning and stopped as Dirk reached it. He took it out and handed it to Gilks.
'Irritatingly, this seems to put your client completely in the clear,' said the sergeant. 'Cellnet have confirmed that the last call made from the car was at 8.46 pm last night, at which point your client was lightly dozing in front of several hundred witnesses. I say witnesses, in fact they were mostly students, but we will probably be forced to assume that they can't all be lying.'
'Good,' said Dirk, 'well, I'm glad that's all cleared up.'
'We never thought he had actually done it, of course. Simply didn't fit. But you know us - we like to get results. Tell him we still want to ask him some questions, though.'
'I shall be sure to mention it if I happen to run into him.'
'You just do that little thing.'
'Well, I shan't detain you any longer, Sergeant,' said Dirk, airily waving at the door.
'No, but I shall bloody detain you if you're not out of here in thirty seconds, Cjelli. I don't know what you're up to, but if I can possibly avoid finding out I shall sleep easier in my office. Out.'
'Then I shall bid you good day, Sergeant. I won't say it's been a pleasure because it hasn't.'
Dirk swept out of the room, and made his way out of the flat, noting with sorrow that where there had been a large chesterfield sofa wedged magnificently in the staircase, there was now just a small, sad pile of sawdust.
With a jerk Michael Wenton-Weakes looked up from his book.
His mind suddenly was alive with purpose. Thoughts, images, memories, intentions, all crowded in upon him, and the more they seemed to contradict each other the more they seemed to fit together, to pair and settle.
