Night Sessions, The (17 page)

And wait, what if it had—

“Good evening, inspector.”

A youngish man seated himself on the bench opposite, planted a full half-pint glass on the table and looked Ferguson in the eye. It was Tom Mackay, the
Scotsman
reporter who'd been there at the start of the Murphy case.

“And good evening to you, Tom,” said Ferguson, resenting the intrusion
on his sacrosanct half-hour with his thoughts. “I'm off duty, and I hope you are too.”

“Oh, you know how it is,” said Mackay. He took a long gulp as Ferguson did likewise. “Journalists and coppers are always on, even when they're off. No rest for the wicked.”

Ferguson shrugged. “Seriously, Tom. There's nothing I can tell you that the Chief Constable didn't announce at the press conference, or that DCI McAuley didn't release a couple of hours ago. If you want anything more recent, just go to the public wiki.”

Mackay made a sideways gesture with spread hands. “Relax, Adam. I'm not here to pester you. I've filed the evening's update already. Off duty and off the record, OK?”

“Fine,” said Ferguson. “I have to say, Tom, your coverage so far has been…reasonable.”

“I'm not sure how to take that,” said Mackay. “You mean I'm not doing my job?”

“Screw the badinage,” said Ferguson. “I meant it. You're doing your job fine. Pissing off the police and alarming the public isn't doing your job, whatever your colleagues on the red-eyes may think.”

Mackay snapped his fingers. “I was
sure
it was in the contract…oh, OK, enough of the banter.” He took a deep breath. “Just wanted to talk, you know? About the wider ramifications of the case.”

“Off duty and off the record?” Ferguson snorted. “I don't have all night.”

“You must have time for another pint,” said Mackay. “My shout.”

“Pint, yes,” said Ferguson. “And I'm buying, thanks all the same.” He leaned back. “Go ahead.”

“The two students being held at St. Leonard's,” said Mackay. “They're involved, yes?”

“They haven't been charged yet.”

“I'll take that as a ‘yes.’” Mackay grinned. “And one thing they'll definitely be charged with is a spot of vandalism at Greyfriars Kirkyard, right?”

Ferguson said nothing.

“Oh, we got word of a rammy in the cemetery,” Mackay went on. “Went round this morning and took pics of the graffiti. Asked around the Uni about the two kids. Rumour is they're into some kind of anti-religious cult or clique, which nobody knows—or wants to say—much about. And I know who Major Weir was as well as you do. So when McAuley stands on the Greensides steps and finally admits very reluctantly that the police might
just be looking for ‘some tiny, unrepresentative, marginal group of so-called Protestant extremists,’ I put two and two together. Well, three, when I add ‘Bishop of St. Andrews’ to the Ogle search.”

“Aye,” said Ferguson, taking his time, and thinking,
You too, huh?
“If we're talking obscure Protestant extremists, in Edinburgh, who're willing to kill and don't have an Irish connection, it's no surprise to find some identification with the, ah, martyred saints of the past.”

“So why aren't you saying that in public?”

“Operational reasons,” said Ferguson. “You'll have to take my word on this. We'd very much appreciate it if you wouldn't mention it as yet, no matter how obvious you may think the connection is.”

Mackay shot a sceptical look over the rim of his glass. He wiped froth from his mouth.

“Not buying it,” he said.

“Give me a moment to explain,” said Ferguson. “And speaking of buying…”

He returned from the bar with two pints and an argument.

“Look,” he said, “it's not that it isn't obvious, or that it's a big secret. It's just a specific piece of evidence we've come across, a stroke of luck really, and it might set back the investigation if it became known that we had it. That's all. You aren't missing a scoop.”

“Nothing political behind this discretion?”

“Nope,” said Ferguson.

Mackay raised his glass, nodded, and took a small sip.

“OK, change of subject,” he said. “What do you make of the stem-cell business?”

“What stem-cell business?”

Mackay raised his eyebrows. “Now,
that
was in my latest. Mrs. Bernadette White, the housekeeper, yeah? She's scheduled for spinal stem-cell regen therapy on Monday morning.”

“You put that in a news report?”

“Don't look at me like that,” said Mackay. “I got it from a reliable source at the Western General, but not on the staff, so there was no question of doctor–patient confidentiality involved. Indiscretion, at most.”

“Not so reliable,” said Ferguson. He hoped it wasn't Isla who'd let this slip. “Leaving aside the whole medical-confidentiality aspect—she's a Roman Catholic.”

“That's the whole point,” said Mackay. “She's unconscious, and she'll still
be unconscious on Monday. And for whatever reason—maybe an oversight, maybe she never got around to it, whatever—she doesn't actually have a signed and witnessed opt-out excluding herself from stem-cell regen therapy. No document, no dog-tag, no bracelet, nothing.”

“But surely it's obvious that she wouldn't consent—oh, shit!” Ferguson snapped his fingers in annoyance.

Mackay nodded. “Official non-cognisance strikes again. Her presumed religion and any associated scruples are officially unknown to the hospital.”

“Oh come on,” said Ferguson. “Having the Catholic Bishop of Edinburgh at her bedside, no doubt dabbing oil on her head and big toe or whatever the fuck it is they do, kind of settles that question. One would think.”

“One would think,” agreed Mackay. “But the law doesn't. And I can see the point of the law. The WGH has no basis for assuming that she wouldn't consent, other than her own written or spoken word. You can't presume that people who are claimed to be members of a religious body or cult or whatever necessarily agree to all its doctrines, particularly as applied to themselves. Maybe she knew very well what she was doing. Maybe she made a conscious decison that if she ever broke her neck she'd rather wake up in a regen tank than in an iron lung. And given that she hasn't made it clear she doesn't want it, the surgeons have the old Hippocratic oath et cetera et cetera telling them to go right ahead.”

“They could wait until she came round!”

“Not without making the recovery slower and more difficult. Months rather than weeks of rehab, complications, possibility of infection. Best practice and all that.”

“Shit,” said Ferguson. He closed his eyes and wiped his forehead. “Jesus. That's going to piss off the Catholics.” He opened his eyes and stared hard at Mackay. “I kind of wish that story hadn't gone out, you know.”

Mackay spread his hands. “Can't be helped. Sorry if it's going to cause some friction, but—it's not like it's going to be a big issue in the circumstances.”

“You're right, but…” Ferguson gnawed his lip. Something was bugging him. What was it Shonagh had said about Bernadette White?
Cherchez la femme.
Stem-cell regen,
mutilados
, a possible buried resentment at the whole Catholic doctrine.…That had been when they'd thought that the mysterious Graham was a
mutilado
, not a robot as they were now almost certain he was. But whether he was a robot or not, he'd hung out for months with
mutilados
, he must have some knowledge of, perhaps even sympathy with, their plight. The printing press in the workshop was, Ferguson had little doubt, the one
that had been used to print the Third Covenant sect's tracts, one of which had denounced, among other things, stem-cell therapy. And the latest of which had threatened not just churches but the secular institutions of the state.

“What?” said Mackay.

Ferguson held up a finger. “Wait. Thinking.”

A picture was forming in his mind, a scene, a premonition of how it might appear afterwards in the surveillance traces:

A man, one-legged or legless, with a mangled face, bandaged perhaps, a face from which eyes would be politely or sympathetically averted, and which face-recognition software would struggle to recognise and would refer upward to higher-level processing, caught in a long queue of ambivalent images; a man swinging himself along on crutches or wheeling himself in a chair, hirpling or rolling through the gateway of the Western General, around the back of the Alexander Donald Building, up the steps or the wheelchair ramp and in through the hissing automatic double doors of the Wellcome Trust Stem-Cell Regeneration Clinic, where he'd be seen for a moment as one more patient come to have his dreadful injuries seamlessly repaired with tissues grown from his own cells until he blew himself up and brought the building down to rubble that would crash down and be sifted for many, many scraps of flesh, none of which would be his because he had no flesh to begin with; while his mind, his soul, was saved and stashed elsewhere…

Ferguson brought his fist down on the table and jumped up.

“I think you may have cracked something for us,” he said to Mackay. “Thanks.”

He drained his glass, hurried outside into Rose Street and phoned Greensides, then the police team at the hospital. Then he caught the tram home, to find his daughter, Niamh, wearing very little but some complicated paper shapes that Isla was pinning together on her.

“Hi, Dad,” said Niamh.

“You're not going out in that, young lady.”

Niamh laughed. “It's my design.”

“I'm sure it'll look wonderful,” said Ferguson. He had not the faintest idea how it would look, but it would fit.

Isla took a final pin from her mouth.

“How was your day?”

“Fine, fine,” said Ferguson. “I may have just saved your life.”

“That's good,” said Isla. “Now make yourself useful, and call out for a takeaway.”

He did. Later that evening he surprised Isla by telling her that he had an early start on the Sunday morning, because he was going to church.

“Try not to attack anyone,” she said.

“Cornelius?”

Cornelius Vermuelen slid on his wheeled board from under the jacked-up car. His wife, Emere, was standing in her dressing-gown, smoking a cigarette and looking down at at him.

“You're up early,” she said.

“The car's losing air.”

“Aren't you coming to church this morning?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “But I want to fix the car first.”

“Well, you'd better get a move on. It's nearly quarter to nine, and you'll need a wash.”

The service wasn't till ten-thirty.

“Plenty of time,” Cornelius said.

“Are we still going out this evening?”

“Yes, but…after I've been to evensong, OK?”

“What! That's a bit of a nuisance.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “It's just something I want to do.”

Emere shook her head. “I suppose you'll be wanting me to cook an early dinner, then.”

She didn't sound pleased. He didn't blame her. He hardly ever went to evensong.

“No, let's eat out,” Cornelius said. “How about the Thai on Fenton Street?”

“Sounds good,” she said. “It's a date. We can meet outside after the service.”

“You don't want to come along?”

“Morning's enough for me.”

Emere regarded her work as a schoolteacher as a more important expression of her faith than churchgoing. Sunday afternoon and evening were for taking it easy.

“I'll think about it,” she said. “Right now I'll see if I can scrape together some breakfast, and then I have things to do before I start getting ready for church.”

“Ah, that's fine,” said Cornelius. “Anything you need a hand with?”

“I'd rather you got the car fixed and had your shower.”

“Shouldn't take long. I've found what's the matter. Air pipe's a bit frayed, that's all. Losing pressure.”

Emere stayed where she was. Cornelius thought he could make out a sceptical expression on his wife's upside-down face.

“What's got into you about evensong, anyway?” she asked, stubbing out her cigarette on the path. “Infatuated with one of those pretty girls in the choir, or what?”

She said it with a laugh, but her voice had an edge to it.

“No,” he said. “It's…ah, I better explain.”

Cornelius sighed, hauled himself all the way out from beneath the car and stood up.

“It's something J. R. asked me to do.”

“That nutter!” They'd had John Richard over for dinner once. Once had been enough. Emere had never quite forgiven Cornelius for inviting him. “What's he want with our, what was it, ‘den of heathen Erastian syncretism’?”

Cornelius explained what Campbell had asked him to do.

“And you take this seriously?” Emere asked.

“Not exactly,” said Cornelius. “But I said I'd do it, so I'm doing it.”

“Why didn't you tell me first?”

“Because I didn't want to have this conversation. I realised how ridiculous you'd think it all was.”

“Well, I'd rather think you were ridiculous than think you were either up to something or had got overzealous all of a sudden.”

“You didn't think that!”

“I didn't know what to think.” Emere crooked a finger under his chin. “So tell me in future, yes?”

Cornelius leaned forward so that their foreheads and noses touched. “Yes.”

“Good,” she said. “Now get back under that car.”

About fifteen minutes later Cornelius finished an awkward job of winding duct tape around an inconveniently located pipe. He slid out from under the Tata Air, sucked his knuckles, wiped his hands, leaned into the car and turned on the engine. It whirred into life. The pressure gauge stayed steady. He turned the engine off and closed and locked the door. It was a fine morning, Lake Rotorua blue under a blue sky. St. Faith's Church was just down the hill, past the even more elaborate marae. Out on the lake the first seaplane flight of the day was slicing across the water. A moment later it took off,
heading west to overfly the local volcanic features. The bungalow-crowded low hillside around him was quiet, still mostly asleep. Later it would rouse to its usual untidy Sunday self: men tinkering with cars or improving their houses, wives smoking and talking across fences. The kids were already up and about, running and yelling among the sulphur-stinky steam from the hot mud puddles. Ohinemutu hadn't changed much in the twenty-odd years that Cornelius and Emere had lived there, except that the cars at the roadsides were pneumatic or electric rather than petrol or diesel.

Nine o’clock. Cornelius flicked the news switch on his phone—he'd never quite taken to phone clips, let alone frames. He preferred keeping his distance from what he saw and heard on-screen and online, whether it was of the real world or virtual worlds.

A bit of local news—mudslide in Hawkes Bay; Labour minister denies US link—then:

“Police in Edinburgh, Scotland have issued a description and photograph of the suspect in the two recent terrorist attacks on clergy. They are keeping an open mind on whether the suspect is a man or a humanoid robot. A Sony spokesperson has categorically denied that any of its ill-fated robots are involved, or present any danger to the public. Here to discuss this…”

Emere appeared on the doorstep, brandishing the kitchen television.

“Have you heard this?” she called.

Cornelius held up the phone and flourished a thumb, and looked again at the device. The screen was showing a counter-terrorism expert whom he'd seen before. This time he was talking up an Edinburgh police spokesman's reluctant admission that some kind of Protestant fundamentalist sect might be behind the outrages. Cornelius rolled the picture back to the previous shot, showing the face of Graham Orr (human) or Hardcastle (robot).

He hurried inside. Bacon sizzled under the grill. The croissants were in the oven. Emere handed him a mug of coffee. He took it gratefully.

“A robot run amok!” she said, still watching the television. “That's even more extraordinary than religious or anti-religious terrorism.”

“Even more unbelievable,” said Cornelius. “But that's the one they're picking up on.”

“I suppose the media will be all over Waimangu tomorrow,” said Emere. “Not to mention the police.”

Cornelius hadn't thought of that. Now he did. If there was one place in the world where humanoid robots and Protestant fundamentalism came together, it was Waimangu.

“The police will be all over it
today
,” he said. “They'll want to know if any of the robots there know anything about this…Hardcastle character.”

“Do you think they might?”

He thought about Piltdown, the disgruntled anthropoid android.

“Hah!” he said, “I can well imagine one of our robots taking a machine gun to these creationist creeps. Blow the whole thing up, that's what I'd do in their place.”

“You're being flippant,” said Emere. She looked anxious. “Yes?”

“Yes, I'm being flippant,” Cornelius reassured her. “Robots are just too empathic to harm a human being. They're better than we are. No original sin, as our friend J. R. would put it.”

Emere grimaced at the mention of his name, then frowned. “Do you think he knows about all this?”

“I doubt it,” said Cornelius. “He won't listen to the radio or watch television or go online on ‘the Sabbath.’ He might not even turn his phone on.”

“Then he's in for a nasty shock if the police turn up.”

“The robots are in for a nastier one…wait a minute, they aren't! They're online a lot of the time anyway. They can monitor police communications anytime they want. They'll know about what's going on. And they'll tell John Richard, if there's anything to worry about.”

“They might,” said Emere. “Try giving him a call anyway.”

Cornelius tabbed to Campbell's number and called. To his surprise, it was answered.

“Hi, Cornelius.” His voice sounded heavy, and not surprised at the call.

“You've heard the news from Scotland?”

“Sure have,” said Campbell. “One of the robots told me a few minutes ago. Nasty business. I'm scanning the Scottish news channels right now.”

“Even on the Lord's Day?” Vermuelen couldn't resist asking.

“Works of necessity and mercy,” Campbell replied brusquely. “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

“Wise words,” said Vermuelen.

“Anyway, it's still Saturday over there,” Campbell added, with a characteristic logical leap of Presbyterian casuistry. In a more serious tone he added: “What do you make of all this?”

“It's not what I make of it that matters,” said Vermuelen. “It's what our local cops will make of it that I think you should consider.”

“Oh, I've considered it all right,” said Campbell. “And so have the robots. They're vanishing into the bush as we speak.”

“That won't look good.”

“Well, seeing as they haven't
done
anything, I don't blame them,” said Campbell. “I'm quite happy to stay here and talk to the cops, if and when they turn up.”

“They'll still want to talk to the robots,” said Vermuelen. “And in any case, there's no point in the robots hiding in the bush. One plane or chopper with infrared could pick them up in no time.”

Campbell's guffaw made Vermuelen jerk the phone away from his ear.

“Infrared?” Campbell scoffed. “Over Waimangu? There's enough hot spots here to keep them chasing warm vapour all day. Besides, the robots can just power down and cool off to ambient, pull some brush over themselves and they're as good as invisible. And
they
'll
still be able to see everything that's going on, in the first place from hacking the channels of whoever's looking for
them
. You'd need a massive cordon and sweep to find any of them at all. You'd need thousands of people. It's just not practicable.”

Emere opened the oven, took out the croissants, turned off the grill and tapped her wrist. Vermuelen nodded.

“Man, they might just do it,” he told Campbell. “If people ever got worried about killer robots, that's exactly what they'd do.”

“I can explain to them why they needn't worry,” said Campbell. “If the cops do come, which I still doubt they will.”

“I'm sure we can rely on you for that,” said Vermuelen, not sure at all.

“I'm far more worried about that other stuff we were talking about,” said Campbell. “Still OK for that?”

“Once I've had my breakfast,” said Vermuelen. Campbell started to say something.

“That was a hint,” said Vermuelen, and Campbell took it and rang off.

After all that, Cornelius and Emere were a few minutes late into the church. They ducked to a pew at the back. The vicar glanced up from the lectern, smiled, and returned to her reading from Isaiah. Cornelius waited until everyone was standing for the first hymn before looking around the congregation. The church was about half full, as usual. He recognised everyone there except a couple of obvious tourists and one Pakeha man in a suit, a couple of pews in front. His cropped hair, and something in his build and stance, made Cornelius suspect that he was an American exile.

The hymn finished. The stranger, who'd been singing from the hymn book rather than from memory, sat down a second or so after everyone else. This pattern persisted through the rest of the service. The stranger didn't
join in the Eucharist. After the benediction, Cornelius and Emere were first out of the door. They waited a few paces down the path while the rest of the congregation streamed out. Emere took care of talking to friends and neighbours, while Cornelius nodded and smiled and kept looking out for the stranger. Eventually he emerged, in animated conversation with the vicar. She noticed Cornelius and headed straight for him, the stranger in tow.

“Morning, Lisanne,” said Cornelius.

“Good morning, Cornelius—oh, hi, Emere! I'd like you to meet Brian Walker, he's from the St. Patrick's Fellowship in San Francisco, just over from the States for a visit to Catholic schools in NZ…”

Cornelius shook the American's hand, thinking,
So much for that
. Walker was tall enough to have to stoop slightly. He almost bowed to Emere, turning away before wrinkling his nose slightly at her post-church cigarette, and he gave Vermuelen a scrutinising glance. Or perhaps Ogling—he wore frames, which Vermuelen thought slightly indecent to wear in or just outside a church.

“Hi,” said Vermuelen. “Are you having a good trip?”

“Excellent,” said Walker. “Apart from your beautiful country and all that, it's wonderful to be able to see parochial schools again.” He shook his head. “I've no doubt we'll see them again in the US, but not in my lifetime.”

“It must be tough,” said Vermuelen.

“Yeah, it's tough. The things our kids are taught in the state schools would make your hair stand on end.”

Vermuelen made some sympathetic noises, then Walker and Reverend Lisanne were off through the crowd.

Vermuelen called Campbell again as he and Emere walked back up the street to their house.

“Any developments?” he asked.

“All quiet on the western front,” said Campbell. “Anything at your end?”

“Just a travelling Romanist,” said Vermuelen. “Brian Walker. A Yank. Nice enough guy.”

“You know all this?” Campbell said. “You're sure that's all he is?”