what’s the one thing in the world that can uproot almost anything?” ’
‘What is it?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me the answer. He’s secretive sometimes. But I know. I worked it out. It’s love, Egon. Love can uproot almost anything.’
‘You think love makes the Teleportation Device run?’
‘Yes. The reason it works is that … Oh, Egon, I love him!’
‘Who?’
‘The Professor, of course. I love him! He’s the most wonderful man I’ve ever met. He’s so clever and kind and honest and dedicated.’ Just talking about it seemed to make her squirm into herself with pleasure like someone trying on a new fur coat for the first time. ‘And now I know he’s brave, too! You saw how he was, after what happened. And then after you left I started crying and he came upstairs and he knew exactly what to say. I love him so much. I go to bed thinking about him and I wake up thinking about him and then I’m allowed to spend all afternoon with him. I’m so lucky he works here at the weekends, too — I can’t stand my days off.’
‘So you’re fucking him?’
She snorted. ‘No, I am not, you reptile! We’ve never so much as exchanged a significant glance. He doesn’t even suspect how I feel.’
‘Why don’t you tell him?’
‘I couldn’t. I’d be too humiliated. I know a genius like him would never be interested in a girl like me. He’d be nice about it, of course, but if he ever found out, I’d just wither away.’
‘But, Adele, you’re the most exquisite girl I’ve ever met. He’s only a boring scientist.’
‘That shows you shallow you are, Egon. He’s a great man. He’s invented a teleportation device.’
‘So have I, as it happens.’
‘But this one is going to change history.’
‘And it works because you’re so in love with him. So who is
‘No one,’ replied Adele, showing a crackle of hypothetical jealousy. ‘He’s too wedded to science.’
‘So how does it work for him?’
Adele bit her lip. ‘It doesn’t.’
‘It doesn’t work for him?’
‘No.’
‘But if it runs on love, and he doesn’t know that you love him, how does he explain the fact that it works for you and not for him?’
‘He doesn’t know.’
‘What do you mean?’
She couldn’t meet his eyes now. ‘He thinks it does work for him. I always perform the experiments for him and he’s so adorably absent-minded so sometimes when he’s not paying attention I…’
‘You fake the results?’
‘Yes. Oh God, Egon, don’t look at me like that. I coax the results along a bit because I couldn’t bear him to be discouraged. I’m not deceiving him, really. He thinks the Teleportation Device works, and it does. I know it does because I test it myself every night. I put things in it and they disappear, just as they’re supposed to.’
‘How do you know someone else isn’t meddling with it while your back is turned?’
‘That wouldn’t be possible. I’ll show you.’
She got down off the table, led him to the back of the room, and swung open a heavy steel door that looked as if it had been installed more recently than the lab’s other fittings. The chamber beyond was about the size of a lavatory. Its walls, floor and ceiling were all lined with grey rubberised panels, and in the centre was a small platform.
‘Can I go inside?’ said Loeser.
‘Just for a minute.’
He stepped through. ‘What’s the point of all the rubber?’
Adele followed him in. ‘Electrical insulation. And behind the rubber there’s lead. The Professor still has no idea what the radiation in there might do to a human body. That’s why the door’s on a time lock.’
‘Like a bank vault?’
‘Yes. Once it’s closed, it can’t be opened until the cycle is over. So no one can blunder inside.’
A prototype teleportation chamber would be a pretty memorable place to fuck someone, it occurred to Loeser. ‘So if someone were to shut it now, we’d be trapped in here together for hours?’
‘The time lock’s synchronised to the ultramigration accumulator, and there’s no experiment running, so it won’t operate. I just wanted you to see how I can be sure that no one else is interfering with the things I put in here.’
‘What sort of things do you mean, by the way?’
‘Just … things. It doesn’t matter. But it works. It’s only a question of making it work for the Professor as often as it works for me. And that will happen, I know it will, if he just carries on a bit longer without getting put off by these petty shortfalls.’
‘But if these things disappear, aren’t they supposed to reappear as well? Isn’t that the point of teleportation?’
‘They do reappear. Somewhere. I’m certain. But at the moment, I can’t quite control it, so I don’t know where. I think it’s because I can’t control my heart, either.’
‘You used to be such a little demon and now you talk like somebody’s simpering chattel. If Bailey is Hephaestus, you’re one of his robotic handmaidens.’
‘Well, at least I don’t go to bed with other men any more. Isn’t that what you always used to object to so much?’
‘Yes, I suppose there is that. Still, you’ve changed so much. I don’t like it, Adele.’
‘That’s the promise of this country, isn’t it? To come here and reinvent yourself? I’m always reading that in the editorial column of the
‘Why would I want to reinvent myself? I’m happy as I am.’
‘You don’t seem very happy.’
‘That’s temporary.’ Except, he realised, it was supposed to be temporary because he hadn’t found Adele yet. And now he’d found her, and she wasn’t exactly pole-vaulting into his arms. Still, if she wouldn’t fuck him in the teleportation chamber, maybe one day he could at least do a few lines of coke off the platform.
‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ said Adele, perhaps presciently.
Loeser followed her back out to the laboratory. ‘Do the police know who killed Marsh?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Because I’ve been thinking about it. It’s Ziesel.’
‘What?’
‘It must be. Ziesel is a man to whom terrible things are destined to happen. It’s intrinsic to his character. Yet here he is with a job and a wife, loved and respected. It can’t be as simple as that. There must be something else going on that we don’t know about, to spoil things. And this fits perfectly. He obviously has some compulsion to murder. The only reason he has such a perfect life at the moment is so that it will be all the more painful when he gets dragged off to some verminous lunatic asylum.’
‘You sound as if you positively long for his life to be a catastrophe.’
‘No, I don’t, I’ve got nothing against him, I just mean that there are some people for whom things must always go wrong, or the universe isn’t working properly. Ziesel is one of those. You can tell as soon as you meet him. So unless he’s got some other disturbing secret, he must be the Monster of CalTech.’
‘But, Egon, everyone knows it was Slate.’
‘Just because of his two-dimensional face and his speech impediment?’
‘No. He murdered all those dogs. There was never proof, quite, but everyone knew it was him. And they were found in just the same way — chests torn open, hearts missing.’
‘Jesus Christ, Marsh’s heart was missing?’
‘Yes. Slate has no alibi. And I know better than anyone, because I’m always here at night, and Slate’s always here too. He’s not cleaning. He’s just stalking around. He’s not even supposed to work after six, but I’ve seen him here at two in the morning. He tries to hide from me sometimes.’
