The Victim in Victoria Station (6 page)

I watched while the whole list moved rapidly past. “Well, I can't really read them. They go by too quickly. But I can't say I notice anything in particular.”

“That's probably because it's too obvious,” said Nigel with a grin. I gave him a little smack. “Ouch! Okay, but you really did have the chance to see what I was getting at. You remember we talked earlier about an interpreter?”

“Oh! Oh, of course, how stupid of me. They're all in English!”

Nigel beamed. The slow pupil had finally gotten it. “Right. Now look at this.” More clicking and typing. “You see, I've typed in exactly the same words I did at first. King Henry VIII. Now watch.” He clicked the mouse button.

Instantly the screen changed. A list appeared in several columns of small print. I could read only a few of the words on the screen. The others were in languages, even alphabets, of which I knew nothing.

“Is that Japanese?” I pointed.

“No, that's Korean. That's the Japanese, there. But don't ask me what all the others are, because I haven't a clue to most of them. Choose one you're able to read.”

“Goodness, I feel like an ignoramus. I don't know any of them! Except French. I used to be sort of good at that in college.”

Nigel moved the arrow to the word
Français
and clicked. Again with no pause the screen filled with what I could, with difficulty, read as references to “le roi Henri VIII d'Angleterre.”

“Now,” said Nigel, who was clearly enjoying his demonstration immensely, “you do it.” He relinquished his chair and sat me down in it. “Move the cursor—that's the arrow, you move it by moving the mouse—”

“I
had
figured out that much,” I said rather acidly.

“Good for you.” Nigel grinned. “Move it to that icon there.”

“Icon?”

“The little pictures. They're symbols—”

I just looked at him.

“—as I'm sure you've realized,” he went on in a hurry. “Go ahead, click the left button twice.”

The little picture in question was a silhouette of two faces, nose to nose, like the old puzzle picture that could also look like a vase. I did as I was told.

The words on the screen shivered, became muddled, and then cleared.

They were all now in English.

“In other words,” I said slowly, “I could look up anything in English and find all sorts of information in lots of other languages. And then have it translated back into English.”

“And that's only part of it,” said Nigel. “I could have entered the search in any language, not just English, and got the same results. Not only that, but even though I can't tell which is which, I know what a lot of the languages are.” He took the mouse from me and made the computer return to the screen with all the listings. “That, I think, is Hindi. I'm pretty sure that's Sanskrit, and somebody told me that's Urdu—or maybe it's that one.”

My mind had begun to work at last. “The languages of the developing countries. Nigel, now I understand what Bill Monahan was telling me. This could be a very important tool for people in these countries! Even if they don't read and write English well, they could get all kinds of information from English sources. And French, and Japanese, and—the mind boggles! This could open up the world for them!”

“And there's one last feature that really put this little gem over the top. Suppose you're in business in, let's say, Zaire. You intend to develop a source of—of something valuable, gold or uranium or zinc or diamonds or I don't know what. You need information about, perhaps, world legislation with regard to mineral rights. But for obvious reasons you don't want anyone to know what you're looking for. Almost any other information source can be traced. Phones can be tapped, library records can be searched, paper leaves a trail.”

“I thought the Internet was pretty easy to invade,” I objected. “I may not know much about how it works, but I'm sure I've read about privacy concerns.”

“And you're quite right. Except, not when you're using the Multilinks search engine. It's encrypted, with an absolutely unbreakable code. I had to use a code to get into it just now, and nobody—repeat, nobody—except me can ever find out that today I looked up Henry VIII.”

“And nobody would ever know that the man in Zaire was checking on mineral rights. Or,” I said, my voice shaking a little, “on how to stage a coup, or build nuclear weapons.”

“Yes. Now do you begin to see why Bill Monahan was on his way to being Mr. Megabucks? And why you may have got yourself straight into the middle of a hornet's nest?”

I
sat back, stunned. “There's something I haven't told you, Nigel,” I said finally. The words came out as a shaky whisper.

I cleared my throat. “Someone tried to break into my house last night.”

“What!”

I nodded. “I thought—the police thought—it was just a burglar. He didn't get in. We have deadbolt locks. Well, that's what we call them in America, anyway—the kind that need a key from either side, so even when he broke the glass in the kitchen door—”

Nigel groaned, his head in his hands. “Why didn't you tell the police about your dead man?”

I noted that Nigel, too, was beginning to assume my ownership of a corpse. “I didn't know last night that there was anything peculiar about his death. I still don't
know
it, if you want to pick nits. He might have died a perfectly natural death. The only suspicious circumstance is that the doctor person, whoever he was, didn't report anything.”

“He did more than not report the death,” Nigel argued. “He must have spirited Monahan away somehow, or the body would have been found right away.”

I was grimly amused. Nigel was now trying to convince
me
we were dealing with murder. “I wouldn't have thought disposing of a body was a one-man job,” I said, playing devil's advocate.

“Oh, no, he had to have help. Two people could drag a dead man through the station and pretend the poor chap was royally pissed. It wouldn't be easy, but it could be done.” Nigel sounded as though he had some experience, and I supposed he did. Not with the dead, presumably, but with the dead drunk.

“Well, but the real question is, why would someone want Bill Monahan dead? That's what we're going to have to find out.”

And the argument began.

“Oh, no, you don't!” Nigel climbed onto his high horse. “You can't keep on getting yourself involved in murders. It's dangerous—haven't you learned that by now? Look here, did the man on the train, the bogus doctor, know your name?”

“Well, yes. I told him,” I said in a small voice. “And where I lived. Looking back on it, I suppose it was a stupid thing to do, but I was trying to be helpful.”

“Then it's obvious who your burglar was last night. They've warned you off. Face it, Mrs. Martin, they came to your house and tried to kill you!”

I took a deep breath. “I don't think so, Nigel. No, listen for a minute. I really don't see it. If these people wanted me dead, I think they're smart enough that I'd be dead. I think they wanted to scare me, and heaven only knows they succeeded.”

“Right. If you say so. They wanted to scare you off, stop you pursuing this thing any further, and if I were in your place, I should do exactly as they suggested!”

“Would you?”

Nigel's temper may be hasty and his tendency to make the most of his charm deplorable, but he has some sterling virtues. One of them is that, when push comes to shove, he's almost painfully honest. His eyes avoided mine.

“All right, then!” he shouted after a moment. “No, I shouldn't. I should chase them to the ends of the earth. But I'm not …”

He looked directly at me then, and trailed off.

“You're not an old woman. Is that it?”

“Look here, I—”

“It's all right, Nigel. I understand. You mean well. You're a kind child.”

I saw him wince.

“You see? You don't like being condescended to, either. Now let's dispense with the protective nonsense. This is the way I see it. These people, whoever they are, are smart, but they've made one terrible mistake.”

“It appears to me that they've covered their tracks admirably.”

“So far they have, yes. You're absolutely right. The mistake I refer is their initial one. They killed someone.”

Nigel glared. “That's a crime, a sin if you like, not a mistake.”

“It's both. It's the one unforgivable crime. A murderer, even in today's corrupt society, has the whole force of law and order arrayed against him, for the rest of his life. It's a formidable force, Nigel—not just the police, but every single individual who respects the law, all lined up in opposition to our murderer.

“And he knows it. The very first reaction of a murderer to what he's done is fear and the desire to escape. That, Nigel, is the best weapon we hold, those of us on the other side. The murderer's fear works for us, because it leads him to do stupid things, unnecessary things, things that will, almost always, lead him into the snare that's set for him.”

“‘Almost' always,” said Nigel, still angry and stubborn. “And what about the other people he kills along the way?”

“That, of course, can happen. It's one of the truly frightening aspects of murder, how often one leads to another. But that's just one more reason to act, and to act fast. Now look.”

I changed my tack. “You're worried about me, Nigel, and that's sweet. I appreciate your concern, I really do. But I think you have the wrong idea about my intentions. I don't plan to go off in all directions and tilt at windmills. I'm going to be logical about it and use the resources at my command. And frankly, the most important of those resources just now is you.”

I pointed to his computer. “You have there the most powerful information-gathering tool the world has ever known. I'd heard that said before this afternoon, but I didn't really understand. Now I'm a true believer. Why can't we—or actually, why can't
you
—use that tool to find out things they—the bad guys, whoever they are—don't want us to know?”

“For example?”

“For example, what's going on in Multilinks International that made someone kill their CEO?”

“And how am I meant to do that?” His anger had simmered down to sulkiness and sarcasm.

Good. That meant all I had to do was flatter him a little more, and he'd capitulate. “Heavens, I don't know! You're the one who knows how to make that box turn cartwheels. I hesitate to suggest it to someone of your age and rebellious tendencies, but are you averse to doing something slightly illegal?”

That did it. He fought hard to hide the grin, but the dimples gave him away. “Meaning what?” His voice was meant to be gruff, his tone sober. He didn't quite manage it.

“I want you to break into the Multilinks computer. Hacking, I think it's called?”

“Holy—!” He omitted whatever word he'd intended, deferring at the last moment to my aged female sensibilities. “It's called cracking, and it's rather more than slightly illegal, you know!”

“Oh, is it? I thought people like you, computer sharks, I mean, did it routinely.”

“We-el …”

“Can you do it?”

He shrugged elaborately. “Depends. If their internal security is as good as their Internet encryption, no. Nobody could, without a lot of very specialized and high-priced software, and maybe not even then. But it's rather surprising how often computer companies don't have good security. The cobbler's children, you know.”

“Will you try? Considering that we're strictly on the side of the angels?”

“And if I'm caught?”

“You'll have to make sure you aren't,” I said flatly. “But I wouldn't think it was at all likely. They don't know you exist, for one thing, which should make it a lot safer. And it's not as if you were going to steal something. I only want you to nose around.”

“You know, Mrs. Martin, when I first met you, if anyone had told me you would one day ask me to commit a crime, I'd have wondered what they were smoking.”

“It just goes to show that first impressions can be deceiving, doesn't it? And if we're going to be partners in crime, I do think you'd better start calling me Dorothy.”

F
EELING MUCH HAPPIER
now that I'd enlisted Nigel's aid, I went home to plan the next stage of operations. I was really only one tiny step forward. I now knew who the dead man was.

At the thought, some of my mild euphoria evaporated. This was a really dangerous situation I'd gotten myself into. Why on earth couldn't the victim have been some simple tourist who wouldn't matter much?

“Dorothy Martin, you should be ashamed of yourself!” I said aloud. Emmy, napping nearby, twitched a whisker but didn't wake. She was used to hearing her human talk to herself.

Any person's death was important. “Any man's death diminishes me… . I am involved in mankind… . send not to know for whom the bell tolls… .” The venerable dean of Paul's had it right. I would, or I should, have been concerned, no matter who the victim was.

On a less philosophical note, if the man in the train hadn't been who he was, he almost certainly wouldn't have been murdered. Unless, of course, he was killed simply for his money and passport.

Oh, right, and then the casual killer is going to remove the body, at great inconvenience, and then try to break into your house. Very good, Dorothy.

I'm tired
, I excused myself to my sarcastic alter ego. I hadn't had enough sleep, and my leg still hurt. I went out into the kitchen, made myself some coffee, and then curled up on the couch and turned back to my real problem.

Which, oddly enough, was an ethical one.