‘Okay,’ began Clio, ‘I think the guy you encountered in the upstairs bedroom is called Julius Strathclyde.’
‘Julius? Good grief! What’s wrong with his parents? Sorry, continue.’ It was irrational of me, Adolf and Hitler were perfectly bland names over on Alpha but here on Beta you'd have to wonder about why someone would name their child that. That's how we feel about Julius back home; burning down our library made us twitchy like that.
‘He went to school with Charles. Calls him Charlie. They have kept in touch ever since. The probability is extremely high that this is the only person with a spare key to his house. Neither man has a large social media footprint. In fact, they are positively antiquarian. It's frustrating, actually. If you need to know more about this guy, I'm going to have to do some legwork. He's a professor in ancient languages and religions. And it seems that as a part time activity he volunteers as a cataloguer for the Fitzwilliam Museum.’
‘I knew I had a good feeling about him. Did I mention he held his nerve during a psychedelic wow bang?’
The three of them nodded appreciatively.
‘Why didn't you get more information from him directly? You had time, right?’ asked Ramin.
I sunk under the water and came up again. I was still cold. ‘Did you run this bath with cold water mixed in?’ Running the hot water tap, I carried on. ‘He was very resistant. I would class him as both highly intelligent and moral.’
‘Bugger,’ said Paul. ‘Did you get anything at all?’
‘He knows about the egg, but he doesn't know where it is and I don't believe he has anything to do with the people that murdered his friend or are after the egg.’
‘How did you apply the truth serum?’
‘Handshake.’
‘And?’
‘And he paused when I questioned him.’
‘Damn! He actively resisted you, even after you applied the drug?’ asked Clio. ‘Did you..?’
‘Yes, I got him to inhale it the usual way. I got him to touch his nose. At that point he answered, but he was hugely reluctant. I was concerned that he would break out.’
That's the problem with moral/intelligent, you could only lead them in the direction they wanted to go as there was nothing duplicitous in them. The other difficult personality set was the immoral/intelligent ones, because they invariably would lead you wherever they wanted to go. In our line of work we regularly came across both sets. Thieves and geniuses have lots in common. And then of course there's us, the curators. Intelligence is a prerequisite, morals aren't. And of course, morals didn’t always have to comply with societal norms. A person with a strong moral code does not automatically obey the law. In fact, the more intelligent they were the more often they deferred to their own moral standards than that of society’s. Happily though, they tended to run along the same course. Otherwise you’d be overrun with vigilantes.
‘Why didn't you just force the answers?’
‘Because I think we need him.’
‘Was he very good-looking?’ Clio asked in a coy voice.
I laughed and splashed water at her. ‘Idiot. Paul, pass me a gown, I don’t want to freeze to death. Let's continue this in front of the fire.’ One of the major plusses of a house rather than a hotel.
Settling down in the living room, I caught up on what the others had to report.
‘I haven't heard any rumours about the egg,’ Ramin said. ‘Charles made no mention of it anywhere on his phone or social media, neither did the dealer. We can't even be certain that's why they met, except that the doll case he put on the table briefly fits in with the story Julius told you about.’ Ramin put another log on the fire and continued while Paul made us some hot chocolates. That’s something the northern countries excelled in, and if I drank too many more I’d have to add a few miles to my daily run.
‘I think we can also assume the egg wasn't in the doll case.’
‘How can we be certain?’ asked Paul.
Clio rolled her eyes. ‘They already have the outer doll case. Why would they have broken into his house if they had the egg, stupid.’
‘Okay, concentrate people, this isn't helping. The egg will resurface. That isn't a problem. What is a problem, is how that car evaded your observance Paul, and why we haven't been able to track the assailants or their car. London is full of cameras and we have access to all of them. Clio, why don't we know who they are?’
Clio glared and then bit off her reply. We might be best friends, but I was her lead officer on this, and she was failing.
‘Honestly Neith, I don't have a sodding clue. It's as if they knew how to evade every camera. Or they had jammers?’
‘Beta technology doesn't have jammers that fine-tuned yet. See if you can spot any anomalies, and trace those instead. Sudden electricity shortages, EM pulses, any Beta technology at the moment will leave a dirty trace. Find that instead.’
‘Are we going to consider that it's Alpha technology?’ asked Ramin.
We all paused. Obviously, there was a total technology embargo, but it wasn't impossible that something had been left behind, either lost or forgotten. But then they'd have to know how to use them, and most Alpha technology was biometrically driven.
‘Come on, Ramin. I think we can rule that scenario out. I can entertain the idea of their being a second team here, but not one that’s working
