Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

dropped. But then she mustjust have grabbed it, mustn’t she, and run for cover. Was that it? Frustrating.It must have been. Last straw. What you were doing, you were playing her along,weren’t you, trying to tease it out of her. I can quite see that. Then youcould just have gone straight to Stuart yourself and spilled the full Heinz.Yes?”

“No,”Carver said stonily. He stared at Latham, into Latham’s pouchy clever eyes. “Howeverthat disc was prepared – sampling, a backtrack from the park and then a voicemimic for me, perhaps – I didn’t say anything about her telling me, and myhelping her out. I actively discouraged that. I told her not to tell me, to tellonly Stuart, and as quickly as she could. Or if she couldn’t face him, go to you.”

“Me.”

“Yes.”

“Well,”Latham’s eyelids had gradually folded to half-closed, as Carver had seen themdo now and then over a drink, a steak, an ice-cream. “It’s an odd one, isn’tit? What was it you suggested? And actor mimicking your voice? That’s a rarethought. Normally detectible. And why? The disc,” Latham added softly, “wasfound in her bag, on the floor of the Ladies. Luckily the thing was in itscasing, so the blood didn’t get into it. It could have been cleaned up. But mucky.”

Carverhad stopped talking. Latham did not believe him.

Understandably.Third Persons were reckonedimpervious virtually to anything, no blood, no human meddling could eliminateor distort their message. The very latest backroom science. And so, Carver waslying.

DidLatham therefore think Carver, having failed to get in on whatever temptingtreachery or idiocy Silvia Dusa had undertaken, had later killed her? How hadhe done that, then? Therewere no drugs in her system or marks elsewhere on her body. She had not been,presumably, blind drunk. So Carver, perhaps sneaking in from the smoker’sgarden, had told her to sit back on the loo floor, put on plastic gloves, andthen neatly cut her wrist vein lengthways, without an objection, or a singlerazorous slip.

Heimagined Latham would have to detain him, no doubt leaving him first to stew,then suggesting Carver sleep over on the sixth floor, where there were a seriesof cell-like bedrooms, used for the nocturnal sojourns of those on duty, onwatch, exhausted, or held in mild-mannered custody.

ButLatham merely suggested they go down to the foyer-hall, where Latham couldaccess transport, and Ken could arrange for Carver another fake cab.

“Oh,just one last thing perhaps I ought to show you,” Latham remarked in athrowaway style, as they descended to the third floor. The lift, alreadyprogrammed, halted. Carver noted Latham, as Jack Stuart was inclined to, seemedto be repeating a lot of the same words – just, last. Did it mean something? Or was it just one last gambit toinduce, (or allay?) unease?

Theywalked into one of the small side rooms. Latham hit the lights and woke the automaticon the computer. The large screen brightened, and without pause flooded up thestatic drowned image of a dead woman on a mortuary slab. Dusa,naturally.

Howyoung, how agonisingly un-grownup she looked. No, she was not in her forties. Thiswas a well developed teenager, sixteen, eighteen, perhaps. And how dead.

Itwas a fact some corpses, for by now Carver had been shown, both on screen andin photographs, several, could look startlingly youthful. But in converse casesit went the other way – a sixty-year-old boy who had died of rat poison at theage of twelve; a hag of seven left pristine but empty by the side-blast of abomb. They always shocked you. But the shock altered. After the very first, forCarver, the impact was lessened. Not in any trite or pragmatic way. More as ifsome shield was now flung up before and about him in the very second his brainaccepted what his eyes revealed.

Shehad been beautiful, it was undeniable, Silvia Dusa. Decently covered by asheet, needing only her face and her left arm and wrist to be displayed, yetthe contours, valleys and soft full mounds of her body were explicit. Her blackhair, thick and vibrant enough still to have retained, in those moments ofvisual capture, its luxuriance and scope, lay under her face, throat andshoulders, the perfect backdrop: ebony under honey.

“Awaste,” said Latham. “A truewaste. Still a virgin.” He spoke the leery words respectfully and with regret. “Adamned bloody shame.”

Actingall this, one assumed. He would be studying Carver’s reactions.

Carversaid, emotionless yet grave, “What about her mother?”

“Ohthat. She didn’t have one. That is, the woman died years ago – ‘90’s, 80’s. InVenice, I believe. DeathIn Venice.Just goes to show.”

Theystayed motionless and dumb before the icon of dead Silvia for another fewminutes. And reluctantly, but clinically, Carver took in the drained wrist,with its rucked, red-black lesion. The skin, the opened vein, seemed strangelyfrozen, a sort of meaty-ice had formed on and out of them.

“Let’ssee about cars,” said Latham.

Thescreen sank through violet, the overhead lights through scarlet, to oblivion.

Outsidethe wind kicked at the scaffolding. Like some giant hell-harp its poles andjoints twanged and plinged in impotent answering rage.

Carver madecoffee in the kitchen of his house. The fake cab was still parked, ticking andunlit, outside in the lane, and exacerbating the security light. When Carverturned off the downstairs house lights, the cab eventually roused itself anddrove smoothly off. He suspected it might nose back again later, as ifcruising, but did not bother with checking whether it checked on him.

Whennext Carver drove himself, it went without saying, he could expect to be tailed.But that could happen anyway, at any time. Mantik took care.

Whyhad he been let go?

Whynot, if they thought he really was innocent, had just been rather naive inattempting to lure the facts of Dusa’s misdemeanour out of her – only wantingthereby to get her into bed.

(Avirgin. That had thrown him. More than his mistake on her age.)

Theywould certainly have him back for an in-depth meeting, however. He could notevade that. He had never had to undergo anything really serious in that line.But now he would.

Hecould not fathom what had happened with the Third Person, or the voice that washis own yet was not his at all.

Itwas all a game though, in its way. Everything. What was the