Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2013 (18 page)

***

Dr. John Llandas was (or had been) younger than Frank Beers. A bioscientist, said to be going places in a hurry. Banks stared down at him, slumped over the table in his lab and thought, You're not going anywhere in a hurry now, are you, Doctor? Except for the morgue, of course. Turning into a popular port of call.

He rolled up the corpse's right sleeve. No letters. Not yet anyway.

"This one for Renata Dibdin, too?"

"Does seem to be turning into her specialty."

"I'll talk to her later."

Within six hours the letters had appeared on Llandas's arm. This time they spelt out N A. After this information had been phoned through to him, Banks suddenly had a thought. Na: sodium. He remembered that much from his school chemistry. So what about Tha, then? He clicked on to Google and looked it up: there was an element called thallium, even though its symbol wasn't Tha. And thallium turns metallic when exposed to air. The hydroxide from it is malleable; you can cut it with a knife. It also happens to be extremely toxic.

He stood in the lab with Renata Dibdin.

"Are you sure there's no thallium in there? You remember that Russian guy. What was he called? Litvinienko. Putin's boys got to him in London with something radioactive...."

"Polonium-210. None of that here. And I'm afraid there's no thallium either. Or I'd have found it. Very quickly."

That night Banks went at these new facts with everything he had, with the assistance of some malt whisky. He even added together the atomic numbers of sodium and thallium. Eighty-one plus eleven made nine-two. Uranium's number. An important number, surely? Was this a clue?

"Pretty cryptic clue, Joe," his friend Mike said down the line when he phoned him. "Adding one atomic number to another to come up with a third. Why not translate both words into Hebrew and try
Gematria?"

"What's that?"

"All the words in the Hebrew scripture have a numeric value. It's a form of mysticism. And so is what you're doing now. You need a woman, Joe. I've known it for a while. Frieda noticed it too. You're starting to go funny in the head. I remember it well. Between my marriages I was for certain periods clinically insane, without any official diagnosis ever being made, of course. And that's where you're headed, frankly."

"Well thanks, comrade. These little chats with you in the evenings lift my spirits, they truly do."

His friend was right though, wasn't he? These investigations of his now were not just barking up the wrong tree; they weren't far off barking. He poured himself a full glass of malt, and switched on the television.

"Maybe you could explain to me why you wanted Beers dead."

"I didn't want him dead."

"You shouted at him that you wished the crocodile in his brain was dead."

"That's different. I wish the crocodile in your brain was dead. And the slightly smaller one in mine."

"But what was he doing that made you shout that at him? A little birdie was perched on the windowsill at the time, Dr. Dibdin, and she filled me in. This isn't a personal matter any more, I'm afraid. People are dying around here."

"Yes, I had noticed. I check them out afterward, remember. Stick sharp things into their flesh. Then write reports about it all, and send them on to you."

"All right. Now let's start again, shall we? You must tell me what it was you knew Frank Beers was doing that led to the argument. It might be relevant to my investigations. Or shall we just sit back and wait for the next white coat to keel over? You wear one too, I can't help noticing."

She stared out of the window. Banks looked over her shoulder in the same direction. My God, there's a day going on out there. And I never even noticed. Our girl is thinking. Don't interrupt her. Let her take her time.

"Frank had just lodged a patent. For the Urbino Roach." She stopped then and looked at Banks. He shrugged to signify his incomprehension. She walked across the floor of her office, opened a drawer in the table, and took out a folder.

"Let's get out of here for half an hour, and have a coffee somewhere. I'm sick of the bloody smell of formaldehyde."

"Glad it's not just me, then."

They went to her favorite wine bar where you could buy decent Italian coffee. She saw Banks hesitate as he stared at the bottles. He was hungover from the night before, but he went for the role of responsible cop, and ordered a coffee, too.

They sat at a table by the window and Renata opened the folder. There was a photograph of a small object. A vivid blue capsule shaped like a torpedo. She explained that it contained a creature that was still making evolutionary biologists scratch their heads and murmur. The Urbino Roach had developed with a speed that biologists had previously deemed impossible. It had mutated from the common cockroach. The Urbino, she explained, had become a sort of bellwether. Whenever it sensed the presence of boric acid, which paralyzed and desiccated all cockroaches with great speed, frying them inside their cases, and was now being used in industrial quantities and at enhanced strengths, to try to keep the city hygienic after its recent infestations, it promptly exploded, and this explosion turned its glass-hard black carapace into a thousand accelerating shards. These were so sharp and traveled at such speed that they would blind any surrounding animals, including the human variety, but they fired off just above the level of its fellow beetles on the ground, thus alerting them to the poison in the air that was about to kill them. The Urbino Roach was effectively a kamikaze
Blatta Orientalis;
a self-sacrificing black beetle, whose self-immolation acted as a siren to the roach community. By its own self-immolation, it saved its brothers and sisters.

"And this is Frank's invention. An example of the species is contained inside that hermetic womb at the center of the UR capsule in the photograph. Should the needle-trigger be pressed, then the wall of that plastic womb is immediately breeched, the boric acid in the surrounding container pours in, and the Urbino self-detonates. If someone set one off at the next table, then you and I would be blinded."

"Pretty nasty weapon."

"Indeed. And old Frankie had just patented his invention. He was confident it would make him rich. And that's why I was telling him that I hoped the crocodile in his brain would be annihilated. And I'm still glad it has been. I'm not glad he's dead, Inspector, but I'm glad that particular crocodile has gone bye-byes forever. Now could you do me a favor, and stop treating me as a bloody suspect? It saps my enthusiasm for our collaboration. And if you don't collaborate with me, then who exactly are you planning on collaborating with?"

"John Llandas. Could he have just lodged a patent, too?"

"I don't know. But I know a man who does. I want you to give me till tomorrow."

"What are you going to do?"

"Trust me. Don't really have too much choice, now do you?"

Enscienta. The word made her feel ill. A new body set up to promote collaboration between members of the academic scientific community and private enterprise. It was to Enscienta that Frank had taken his lethal little toy. Charles Ledbury. Managing Director, or these days probably CEO. And to think that they had once shared a bed. Even worse, she had enjoyed sharing it. She reckoned that Charles was the source of information she needed, the only chance either she or the Inspector had at this moment of being anything other than spectators in the assassination gallery. Soon it would be like being a pathologist at the Colosseum. She had a thought and immediately phoned Banks.

"There's no news out on it yet, is there? Llandas, I mean."

"Not at the moment."

"Can you cover it for me? Until tomorrow morning. It could make a big difference. Put a shroud round it all—just for today."

"I'll D-Notice it. It's under the fold for twenty-four hours. You will take care, won't you?"

"I know where you are if I need you. Will you be at home tonight?"

He hadn't even thought about it.

"If it helps."

"It might."

"Then I'll be at home."

She went back to her flat, showered and changed. Jeremy was doing all that was necessary at the lab. She dressed in the black silk items that she knew Charles Ledbury liked so much. She knew how much he liked them because he had bought them for her, these slinky little items, and they had not been cheap. She just hoped he wasn't already set up for the evening.

"Charlie. Remember me," she said into the phone.

"How could I ever forget?"

"I have something very pressing I want to talk to you about. Regarding a patent." There was laughter at the other end of the phone.

"Thought you'd come to see things my way, sooner or later. Well, no time like the present, eh. How about we meet in Maracco's. Have a nice little meal. Be just like old times."

"You did hear about Frank?"

"Yes. What's all that about?"

"Bit of a mystery at the moment. I might let you in on a few secrets later. If you're good."

And so it was that Charles Ledbury and Dr. Renata Dibdin once more sat in Maracco's, gazing down over Piccadilly Circus.

"You even booked our old table, Charlie. Sometimes I think you really do have a heart beating inside that rib-cage of yours, not just a pocket calculator with ventricles."

"It's going pitter-patter now, I can tell you."

Renata had crossed her legs. The black slip was visible above the black silk stockings. Charles stared.

"Do you know, they look exactly like those garments I bought you from Santino's."

"That's because they are."

"I can still remember the feel of them, beneath my fingers."

"Play your cards right tonight, and you might be treated to a trip down memory lane."

He smiled and placed a hand upon her knee.

"Out of interest, what happened to the Swiss finishing-school girl?"

"Went off with someone richer."

"Maybe she should have waited a minute."

"Maybe."

Game on. Suspect identified and targeted.

It was after midnight as they lay together between Charles Ledbury's woven sheets that she finally raised the subject that had put her back in this ex-lover's bed tonight. To be fair, she had enjoyed the meal, the conversation, and the lovemaking. Charles was assiduous and detailed in his attentions; she had remembered that much. She actually liked him, once she had made all the necessary allowances for the fact that he was unscrupulous, amoral, and mercenary; and those were three of his better points. He was caressing her thighs now, with a professional's finesse, though she had little doubt that the same caress would be maneuvering itself up and down her limbs if she had been someone else entirely. No problem there. Renata enjoyed the physical company of men, but only intermittently. They soon bored her. Her only live-in partner had confronted her one day: "You're more interested in elementary particles than you are in me." She would have denied this hotly, if only for the sake of domestic harmony, but she couldn't. It was, after all, true, and Renata had no gift for denying, either hotly or coldly, what was self-evidently true.

"Did you manage to get the paperwork finished with Frank before he went to give his final lecture?"

"Certainly did. We go into production next month."

"So who gets the profits then? From the lovely Urbino Roach? Seeing as how Frank is no longer around, and doesn't have any family I can think of."

"Enscienta. That was the deal. Half the risk and half the profit. In the event of the patent-holder's death or the company's bankruptcy, the profits revert in their entirety to the other party."

"So you own the Urbino Roach outright?"

"How do you know the name, out of interest? He was sworn to secrecy."

"Frank could never keep secrets from me. Not for long. You do realize, Charlie, that this makes you a prime suspect. A certain Inspector has been sniffing around. Can't be long before he gets to you."

"Got nothing to hide. I didn't kill him. Who did, I wonder? Any idea?"

"None I can share without getting put away. I do have an idea for a patent though, as good as anything of Frank's. Could make us both rich."

"Knew you'd come round to it sooner or later. Once you'd got over all that sentimental guff about scientific probity."

Had she not had such an important mission to complete, she would have slapped his face for this remark. He was about to head downtown when she stopped him.

"So who else is on board? I want to know the company I'm keeping before I tell you my valuable secret."

"John Llandas."

"Is that the little ginger-haired runt with the straggly beard?"

"That's him. Welsh boy."

"And what's he come up with, Charlie?"

"Clever little military appliance. It's a gas. Drop it from planes in an exploding canister. Has some dramatic effect on the metabolism—can't remember all the details now. Anyway, it makes the administration of anesthesia so traumatic for the central nervous system that it causes cardiac infarction. Makes warfare effectively impossible for all but kamikaze combatants."

"Sounds promising."

"All we have to do is improve the distribution of the molecules after the explosion and we're away."

"Wouldn't have thought he had it in him."

"He's a very clever fellow, our Dr. Llandas. Got another idea he's just developing, too. A genomic encoder that carries optional exclusions: you can make sure you don't pop one that's non-heterosexual, non-fully-functional, non-blonde or non-brunette, if you like."

"Just the way Hitler would have liked it."

"Now you're getting sentimental again, my darling. So what's your bright idea, that's going to make us both so rich and contented?"

"Just out of interest. If Llandas died, God forbid, then does the same deal apply as with Frank?"

"Exactly the same. Everything reverts to Enscienta."

"And how big would the board at Enscienta be these days?"

"Very small. Really select. Just yours truly."

Renata climbed out of bed and started to dress.

"Where are you going?"

"Home, Charlie, home. Had enough of your charms to last me for at least another year or so, I should think. By the way, I should start checking back on your alibis. A very shrewd fellow called Inspector Banks will be coming to see you very shortly."

"How come?"

"John Llandas has died in exactly the same manner that Frank Beers did. Since you appear to be the main beneficiary in regard to both of their deaths—in the scientific discovery department, anyway—I would have thought you might have some serious questions to answer. Ever talk to me again about my sentimental guff regarding scientific probity, Charlie boy, and I'll drug you and cut your precious bollocks off, one by one. I've done it before, you know. Those boys were dead, admittedly, but I could always arrange that, too."

As she was opening the door to leave, he asked one last question.

"What was your idea for the patent, out of interest?"

"It's a new device for killing crocodiles."