Saskia leaned against her desk. “Go on.”
“I intercepted the email and sent a man around to investigate.”
She began to pace. She looked at the picture of Simon, the blotter, the plant in the corner and the secretary’s little desk. There were no signs that someone had been in the room. “Why did you do that?”
“Instinct.” Jobanique shifted in his chair. “You had a new fridge fitted last year. A simple statistical test indicates that the probability of it failing within five years is less than one in twenty. I don’t like unusual occurrences. I sent the man around as a precaution. Stone.”
Saskia slumped in her chair and threw her feet onto the table, though she really wanted to put her head in her hands. “Stone?”
“He doesn’t talk. I don’t want Internal Affairs on this case before I have all the facts.”
“What are the facts?”
Jobanique played with his pen. “Your secretary was killed two days ago, Friday evening, by a single stab wound just below the ear. It led to a fatal brain haemorrhage.”
“How do you know that?”
“Stone brought a scanner with him. He’s into gadgets. The haemorrhage was effected by an extremely sharp blade more than six centimetres in length. She died almost instantly. What was her name?”
“Mary,” Saskia said.
“Poor Mary.”
Saskia stared at him. “Back to the killer’s movements. Why put her in the fridge?”
“Simple. She’s in the fridge. She’s a big hot object. The fridge’s gas compressor can’t cope -”
“Even less so with broken air conditioning,” Saskia interrupted.
“Agreed. So the fridge breaks. The computer makes an automatic report to have the fridge repaired. They send around a guy first thing on Monday morning, he discovers the body, presto, you’re framed.”
Saskia nodded. “Yes. I wasn’t due back until Tuesday. But why put the body in the fridge? Why not just call the police?”
Jobanique was silent for a while. “I don’t know.”
“Hang on. I’ve got it. I left the office at about six o’clock on the Friday evening. If the murder demonstrably happened a little later than that – which it probably did, considering that Mary was still in the office when I left – then I would have a cast-iron alibi. Witness statements from the taxi-driver, airline tickets – watertight. But by storing the body in the fridge and having the fridge break, the time of death is unpredictable. It would leave open the possibility I murdered Mary before leaving for Marseilles.”
“Fine so far,” said Jobanique, scratching his chin, “but why would you, as a murderer, put the body in the fridge?”
“Perhaps I wanted to store it temporarily and dispose of it later.”
“And just sneak out of the FIB building with her under your arm?”
Saskia smiled. “The mind of the murderer is not always clear. Take the motive, for example. What could that be?”
“Well, Frank did find something,” said Jobanique. “In Mary’s pockets are a number of...interesting photographs. Lesbian. You and her. Oh, forgeries I’m sure.”
Saskia did not respond to his embarrassment. “I see. Blackmail gone wrong. A lover’s tiff.”
Jobanique looked at his watch. “OK, it’s 1:15 p.m. You have twenty hours.”
Her feet dropped from the desk. “What?”
“Think about it. We can’t cancel the repair man. The murderer is certain to check that we’re on his tail, and that would be a give away. Your only advantage is his belief that he’s got away with it. He might make mistakes. At the very least, he won’t be on guard.”
Saskia stood. “Fine.”
“One more thing. The repair man will arrive at nine o’clock on Monday morning. Tomorrow. If you haven’t solved the case by then, IA will move in. If you have, you’ll hand over your notes to Stone and we’ll nail the guy.”
Saskia left her office. In the corridor, thank God, the air conditioning worked. Everything worked, from the freshly-picked friezes to the brass finishings. But the FIB did not suffer from cash flow. As a private organisation, it loaned itself to certain governments and wealthy individuals. The crime game could be good for both sides of the law.
She entered the lift and said, “Lobby.” Beneath the manual panel someone had written: “Another fine product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.”
At the bottom of the building the doors opened onto the mezzanine floor, which held a bar, restaurant and café. The entire area was brightly illuminated with natural light from huge windows. The air was filled with a thousand busy footsteps. Saskia took an escalator to the ground floor proper and entered a second elevator. She pressed her thumb against a panel and said “Down”.
The basement was a stack of grey corridors and grey people. They walked on silent errands. They ignored her and each other. To her surprise, one of them stopped and said: “Have I seen you somewhere before?”
She tapped the ID on her lapel. “Detective Saskia Brandt. Is there a problem?”
The man gave her an appraising look and continued on his errand. “Never mind,” he said.
Saskia located the domestic surveillance office and went inside. She found the operator in charge of camera security and told him the boss wanted to see him. He left irritably. When he returned, Saskia had gone.
Into the Dark
The nightmares had lasted years. In them, David had run through the research centre as though it were a submarine stuck in a crash-dive. Post-traumatic stress, the psychologist had said. But those nightmarish corridors had been faded memories from a younger man’s mind. They were ghosts of something already dead. Here and now they were more hostile and grotesque.
“Bomb damage,” muttered McWhirter, and David, by this time, was too tired to reply. They had been walking for fifteen minutes, but in the cold darkness, his energy and motivation were at low ebb. A colder silence had descended between the two men.
“We must be nearly there.”
“Aye.”
They began to make their way north, along the third corridor of the H-shaped floor. McWhirter called a halt and checked his map. Wearily, David dug him in the ribs.
