‘I’ll follow your lead.’
Courtney pressed the doorbell button and waited.
It took a couple of minutes for the door to open. Lambert Stenger looked quizzically at Courtney and then he spotted Kyle just behind her. ‘Oh, hello again,’ he said. ‘What brings you back here?’
Courtney answered him. ‘I’m Courtney Martell Garavain, Professor Lambert Stenger, captain of the School Security Force. We’d like to ask some questions about what happened to you. There are some things you should be aware of. Your insight on some of those things would be very valuable.’ The truth was that the SSF had the right to question even senior faculty members when working a case, so Courtney could have forced this, but having the subject’s cooperation made things go more smoothly.
‘It’s not really a good time… But I suppose it’s best to get this over with quickly.’ Lambert turned, heading back into the lounge and leaving Courtney and Kyle to take care of the door. ‘Please, ask me anything you want.’
Courtney walked into a lounge which was clearly a family room. Comfortable sofas, a large entertainment screen on one wall, a coffee table which had various books on it, many of them meant for a child, though Lambert’s own book, in hardback, was there too. Physical books were always going in and out of fashion. Currently, most people preferred reading on their ketcoms; Lambert obviously believed in the power of the physically printed page. There were no toys which suggested that Bethany was the kind of kid who enjoyed more mental forms of entertainment, or a mother who religiously cleaned up after her child. Of the mother in question, there was no sign.
There was something a little odd that Courtney picked up on right away but could not quite place. A scent. It sat right on the edge of Courtney’s perceptions and made her feel a little disquieted. She glanced at Kyle, but he seemed not to have noticed anything out of place, so she ignored the feeling in favour of talking to her subject.
‘I’ve read the report, Professor, but it would be useful if you could go over what you remember of the last thirty-six hours or so. Perhaps you’ve remembered something which could be important. You were in lab one twenty-six, working on the new artefact. Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’ Lambert sat down on one of the sofas. He was dressed in jeans and a dress shirt. His feet were bare, and the shirt had been done up wrong as though he had put it on in a hurry. Courtney got the sudden impression that maybe they had interrupted his getting reacquainted with his wife and that the scent was… No… No, that was not it. ‘It’s a fascinating piece, though I suspect it will turn out to be relatively mundane in nature. Just finding something which has been working for so long… It could teach us much.’
‘So I’ve heard. You said that you woke up in a storeroom in the Magical Sciences Building and have no recollection of how you got there. Do you remember anything odd before you woke up? Something in the lab?’
‘Let me see…’ Courtney watched as he considered his answer. He was looking pale, aside from the dark rings under his eyes. If he was supposed to have got a good night’s sleep, it seemed like he had failed. It looked, actually, like he had not slept in two days. If he had been unconscious in a storeroom for eighteen hours of that, surely he would be more rested.
‘I was working on the scans of the artefact,’ Lambert finally said. ‘I wanted a more detailed scan of part of the interior, so I used the imaging radar. I recall that I was going to go home as soon as that scan was done. And then I was in a cupboard surrounded by rolls of toilet paper and bottles of cleaning products. I felt lightheaded, confused. I went outside, thinking that I needed to go home. And that was when Kyle Maynard found me. I’m afraid I have no recollection of anything more than that. Do you think I was attacked? Is that why I suddenly blacked out?’
‘That’s a possibility.’ Courtney paused, deciding how to continue, and that scent kept stabbing at the edge of her mind, demanding attention. She pushed it away. ‘Professor, we’ve reviewed the security recordings for the period when you blacked out. It appears that you destroyed the cameras in the lab, probably with Concussive Force.’
‘What?!’
‘There’s no one else on camera and you leave the lab about thirty minutes after the cameras were destroyed. You appear on several corridor cameras, heading for the basement. Coverage down there is far from complete. A search failed to discover you, there or anywhere else on campus. You vanished for almost eighteen hours.’
‘But–’
‘During the thirty minutes you remained in the lab, it was trashed. Various pieces of equipment were destroyed, including the imaging radar unit and several computers. Most of the artefacts in the room were not damaged, but the new one was smashed.’
‘No! That artefact was– Wait, you think I destroyed it?!’
Something was not right. There was something about his outrage which looked… He looked like he was having fun. And that scent kept coming back to insist that Courtney pay attention to it. What was it? Something with a hint of meat in it. Slightly rotten. There was a metallic edge to it. Coppery… ‘We don’t know, Professor,’ Courtney said, her mind more focused on what her senses were telling her than on her words. ‘We have no evidence one way or another, but you did destroy the cameras.’
‘I did no such thing. I would never–’
‘Where’s your wife, Professor?’ Kyle asked. It was, Courtney figured, a ploy to derail Lambert’s outrage.
‘Candide? She went out. Shopping.’
‘Really? Because her ketcom is here. She’d have a lot of trouble paying for things without it.’
‘She must have forgotten it. I’m sure she’ll be
