Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (47 page)

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

‘The Ulanovs have grown so used to policing the Lex Ulanova in terms of its infractions, that they think the laws of physics are similarly friable. It’s so –
provoking!’

She caught sight of the way he was looking at her, and, from nowhere, she began to laugh. ‘I know!’ she said, putting a hand in front of her mouth. ‘That they believe it
– that’s what matters. Not the truth of it. But to be chased and ruined and threatened over a
rumour
. It’s so absurd.’

She laughed, and he smiled; and in that moment she felt no anger at all. She and Iago hugged.

‘Of course, it’s a question of the stakes involved,’ said Iago. ‘Not
that
it is practicable; but
if
it is.
If
is a potent realpolitik pivot.’
He stretched his legs in mid-air, and yawned. ‘I’m going to go back to the
Rum
for a bit. I’m going to check up on Sapho, see if her prayers to Ra’allah are over.
Make sure the revellers in that bubble aren’t causing her any annoyance. Will you come?’

Diana took stock. She did feel a little lighter inside, though she couldn’t exactly fathom why. But at least the anger and the weepiness had withdrawn inside her, as a snail’s horns
are retracted. ‘I’ll come later,’ she said. ‘I’m going to stay here for a while.’

‘Very good, Miss,’ said Iago, in imitation of his old manner.

‘After all,’ she said. ‘Somebody killed Bar-le-duc. I can’t see how it was done, let along who did it. And that irks me.’

‘Ah, Miss Diana of the Clan Argent, bred to solve problems – if
you
can’t solve it, nobody can. Shall I leave the RACdroid with you?’

‘Yes. I want to look again at the recording.’

‘Bring it back to the
Rum
when you have finished, will you? I’d rather keep it locked away and secure. According to Aishwarya there’s every chance the revellers next
door will try and steal it as soon as they get sober enough to think it might be valuable.’

He left her alone.

9

Solving the Mystery

A sharp-edged block of sunlight slid very slowly over the leaves and the mossy turf. Ducks, invisible in the foliage, played their kazoos. She breathed in the oxygen. Things
might look bleak, but as long as she could still
solve problems
she would be alright. What else was the future, but a series of as yet unsolved problems?

On the other hand, not every mystery has a solution.

The pattern refused to coalesce in her mind. Something was getting in the way. Her recovered good mood started to sag again.

She went over the data in the RACdroid one more time. Insofar as she could tell there
was
nobody in the undergrowth. The shot that killed Bar-le-duc couldn’t have come from there.
None of Bar’s henchmen fired it, any more than did Iago, Sapho or Diana herself. So much was clear. But no matter how she manipulated the data she could not tell whether the fatal shot had
come from outside the bubble, or from the wall itself.

Aishwarya floated over to see what she was doing. ‘Going over the last moments of the life of Bar-le-duc, I see.’

‘I’m trying to work out what happened,’ Diana said. ‘Whoever killed him can’t have been inside the house. It must have been a shot from outside. It was a blow
powerful enough to break apart an entire spaceship, to rip through the side of the side of the house and turn Bar-le-duc into red mist. So why didn’t it just shoot straight through the
opposite wall?

Aishwarya shrugged. ‘You think
that’s
the interesting question?’

‘It’s,’ Diana replied, cautiously, ‘
a
question, certainly. Where did the projectile go?’

‘Maybe it caught a lucky rebound and shot back out the way it came,’ said Aishwarya. ‘Maybe it was some special kind of bolt keyed to dissolve when it struck flesh.’

‘
Are
there such bullets?’ Diana asked, wide-eyed.

‘Well
I
don’t know!’ said Aishwarya. ‘I’m no armourer! That kind of tech-chatter bores me to ice. Things aren’t as compelling as people.’

‘Alright,’ said Diana. ‘I’ll go along with you. The timing of the killing
is
interesting. Bar-le-duc was just about to take Iago – Jack, I mean – away.
Now, either the timing of this killing is perfectly coincidental; or else the killer chose her moment precisely to
stop
that eventuality coming to pass.’

‘But who would want to keep Jack Glass out of prison?’ asked Aishwarya. ‘Prison is where he belongs.’

‘Who indeed?’ asked Diana. She felt that tingling in her scalp, and down the back of her neck, that suggested she was close to something important. ‘His friends? Fellow
revolutionaries?’

‘Why keep it secret, though, if it’s them? Assume an antinomian sloop just happened to be passing, saw – Christ-the-Hindu knows how, but let’s assume it – saw that
Jack was about to be apprehended by the Ulanovs’ most famous policeman. So they fired their magic bullet from their impossible gun, and killed the arresting officer. Wouldn’t they make
themselves known, afterwards? “Hey, Jack, we saved your life . . .”?’

‘That scenario,’ said Diana, feeling the tingling sensation recede, ‘doesn’t
feel
right. Doesn’t feel plausible.’

Aishwarya shrugged again. ‘Doubtless not. It’s a hypothetical, though. Yes? Bar-le-duc and Jack were friends, you know. A long, long time ago. But Bar had been working for the
Ulanovs a long time.’

Something lay, just out of reach of her conscious mind, on the fringes of her thought. She had almost had it. Almost! But it was gone, now. The impossible gun, she thought. The impossible
bullet. She was missing
something
. Bar-le-duc was dead. She knew that because – because what?

How did she know that?

‘There is still some of his blood in Iago’s hair,’ she said aloud.

‘What’s that?’ asked Aishwarya.

‘I’ve been assuming that Bar-le-duc is dead. It certainly
looks
as though he is. But only a fool trusts assumptions. Tell me, Miss Aishwarya: could you analyse DNA from dried
blood?’

‘I could, if I had the equipment,’ Aishwarya replied. ‘But the hooligans in these damn shanty-bubbles stole all my valuable kit a long time ago. You know who you should go
visit? Northface. She’s a friend of mine. You go speak to her – two days’ flight at 1g, not far. Her bubble is called “Penny Lane”. Approach her carefully, though;
she’s not fond of Jack. But she’ll run your DNA. Very reasonable rates.’

‘Thank you,’ said Diana.

Diana took hold of the RACdroid and manoeuvred it through the gate into the adjacent bubble, and from there into the main sphere, where the party was still ongoing. The revellers had got past
the stage of speechifying by now. Many were floating blind-drunk, their arms and legs spread, their faces stupid in unconsciousness. A few other couples were having sex, though not so many as
before. There were fewer clusters of people grasping one another like frogs in spawn. Diana navigated past all this with the droid, and into the docking hallway.

The hatch to the
Rum
was shut, which was presumably Sapho being understandably cautious. She smacked her palm on the curve of spaceship metal, and heard her knock echoing inside.

The mechanism snapped free. The door opened.

Sapho was there. She was crying: her face crumpled and red. That should have alerted Diana straight away, of course; but emotions had been running so high that day it didn’t really seem
that out of place. ‘Sapho,’ she said. ‘Could you put this RAC-droid in storage please?’

Diana pushed the droid through, and followed after. Inside the
Rum
, Iago was reaching for something. Or else some oddity in the angle of her perception made his body look longer than it
was. But this impression lasted barely a second, and she saw that it wasn’t Iago at all, as Sapho shut the hatch and bundled herself against her. ‘Oh mistress,’ the girl cried,
clasping her.

The figure in the cabin was Ms Joad. ‘Hello, my dear,’ she said.

‘How are
you
here?’ asked Diana.

‘Naturally it counts as
loyalty
,’ said Ms Joad. ‘After all, I am now working for your sister. And Sapho, here, would sooner die than betray the Clan! But your Jack Glass
is not a member of
that
family – is he?’

‘You’re working for Eva,’ said Diana, processing the new information. ‘What have you done with Iago?’

‘Jack? Anxious about him, are you? Well I haven’t killed him, at any rate. Not
yet
. No. I stung him with a little jabber I carry about me; muscular paralysis. It’s
selective; I forget the specific vertebrae it targets, but he can still breathe – and talk. I’ve stowed him in one of the g-couches. For
safe
keeping.’

Diana turned, pulling herself round on a wall handle: and there indeed was Iago, laid out in the g-couch for all the world like a corpse in a coffin.

‘I shall tell you straight here and now that I
don’t
believe in wasting time,’ said Ms Joad. ‘It was a near-thing – young Sapho here, bless her loyalty,
explained how close that horrible Bar-le-duc came to snatching Jack. He was working for Eva, you know. Your own MOHsister! Of course, I am too. I’m just retracing his steps. Making assurance
doubly sure.’

‘I can’t believe Eva has employed
you
!’

‘You hurt my feelings, dear girl! True, after my performance on Korkura I was demoted. The truth of it is: I was going to be sent to the belt, some low-grade diplomatic work. No thank you!
But I had been highly enough placed to see what was going on. I took the opportunity to leap before I was pushed. I approached your sister, and was taken into her employ. She’s a canny woman,
Eva Argent. She knows, for instance, how
precarious
her position is at present. But – ah, if she can lay her hands on the recipe for FTL . . . that would strengthen her hand
immeasurably
.’

‘Iago doesn’t have the secret to FTL.’

‘Of course he does! He knew McAuley personally, after all. He must have told you so? No? Perhaps he didn’t trust you. People who are themselves untrustworthy often find it hard to
trust others.’

Diana felt the tumbling, various data falling through her. ‘It would not have served your purposes for Bar-le-duc to capture Jack,’ she said, to Ms Joad. ‘Would it?
You
wanted to be the one to bring Iago back to my sister. To consolidate your position.’

‘You should thank me, my dear,’ said Ms Joad, favouring Diana with her superbly chilly smile. ‘Better
your
family gets the FTL than the Ulanovs, surely? Even if
you
won’t be running the Clan, after all. Still, I’m sure exile won’t be too incommoding for you. Some prisons are
quite
comfortable.’

Diana said: ‘
you
killed Bar-le-duc. Bar-le-duc was coming for us, and you were following him. That flash, outside the house: that was you! You had some . . . what? Targeted
projectile, and blew him to pieces. And then you followed our sloop here. But you took a risk, didn’t you? What if your weapon had split the whole house? What if we hadn’t been able to
control the decompression? We could all have died – and you wouldn’t have had Iago as a bargaining chip. But perhaps that was a risk worth taking?’

‘My dear,’ said Ms Joad, looking bored. ‘I honestly have no idea what you’re chattering about. Now, will you come freely? Or must I jab you too? Either way, you’re
going
into
a g-couch, and we’re going to fly as
fast
as we can. I shall piggyback my ship on Jack’s one, until we use up all of his fuel. We have a long way to go –
all the way to Mars! – and we need to move quickly. You look dismayed, my dear! But perhaps your sister will show you
mercy
. True, she’ll lock you up. At least for a few years,
until her grip on power has been more firmly established. But it is
probably
in her interest not simply to kill you.’

‘Never underestimate the bond between MOHsisters,’ said Iago, in a creaky voice, behind her.

Diana was at the side of the g-couch in moments. Inside, with straps across his chest, and an ill-looking, bluish sheen to his skin, was Jack Glass. She could see that he was paralysed, trapped,
caught like a bug in a spider’s web, cocooned and restrained past all hope of escape. Even if she got the straps off him, his muscles were clenched and nerveless, unmoveable. ‘I’m
still alive,’ said Iago, moving his mouth with difficulty. There were straps across his neck and forehead too.

‘I can’t believe it ends like this,’ Diana cried.

Ms Joad chuckled, coldly. ‘Get in the g-couch, my dear,’ she said. ‘You too, Miss Sapho.’

‘Do as she says,’ rasped Iago.

‘Yes. Take his advice, my dear,
and do as I say
.’

‘She’ll jab you if you don’t,’ breathed Iago. ‘Believe me: it’s not pleasant. It . . .
burns
as well as paralyses. I need
you
in a g-couch. I
need
her
to move the ship.’

‘
You
need?’ repeated Ms Joad, who had floated over to the g-couch, and was holding a pen-shaped object in her right hand. ‘By all means let us consult
your
needs!
So long as they overlap precisely with my needs, I’m sure we can accommodate them.’

There was no helping it. Diana pulled herself over to a free couch. As she manoeuvred herself inside, her mind moved everything about, and tried to connect every datum with every other one. But
it was
impossible
. It was impossible that Iago could escape from this situation. Paralysed with a neurotoxin that would keep his muscles frozen for days. Strapped in a g-couch. Flown to an
unknown destination, where agents of her own family waited.

She laid herself flat in the couch. Ms Joad loomed over her at the lid. With a few swift, precise gestures she fixed the straps about Diana’s torso and tied her arms down. She tied her
left leg, and then her right. She looped a strap about Diana’s neck, and another over her forehead.

‘Hush now,’ said Ms Joad. For an instant their eyes locked, and Diana experienced a weird fluxion in her own thought patterns. How old was this woman? How long had she been
alive?