“You saw her drive away? “
“Yes.”
There was no way of telling what he was thinking. But if the car was gone, Marisa or he must have driven it. If he had done so, perhaps he had killed her. But no memory would surface. How long had he been sleeping? When had he actually gone to bed?
“I assumed she was going home,” he said, trying to project himself into the spirit of his fabrication.
Legister turned to one of men flanking him. “Go back inside and take a thorough look.”
He did so, the other remaining in position.
Owain didn’t move but merely stared beyond Legister, watching the burgeoning dawn. The sun had already been absorbed into the cloudbank, its light drowned. He heard the commander shift his position, moving behind him. There was the chink of something on his Sterling. Owain had a sense of being impaled between Legister’s stare and the unseen muzzle of the man’s weapon.
I couldn’t believe how calm he was remaining. Partly it was his training, of course, but I thought I detected a new brazenness in him. I continued to keep myself very much in the background, doing nothing to endanger us. At the same time I was eager to discover what had become of Marisa.
Owain was acutely aware that he must show no sign of wavering. Legister would pounce on any kind of weakness or inconsistency. He had a formidable reputation. It was he who had overseen the amalgamation of the civilian police force and the security services into the Security Police, he who had formed the Counter Insurgency Forces, giving them quasi-military ranks and equipment to rival the best of frontline units. While the SP was becoming a refuge for invalids and incompetents, the CIF had grown into a private army, increasingly answerable to him alone.
The younger man emerged and walked across to Legister. He was holding Marisa’s bunched-up tights in his gloved hand.
Legister took them from him and put them to his nose. Sniffed.
“Difficulties, major?” he said, holding them up, letting the legs dangle so that their soiling was clearly visible. Their withered emptiness declared both his crime and his damnation.
Briskly Legister stepped forward, producing a slim silver cylinder from his overcoat pocket. He thrust it towards Owain’s face and something hissed from its end.
A waft of menthol-like vapour, swiftly followed by a numbing flood, as though his body had been severed from his head. As he fell, it was Legister himself who caught him.
I came surging out of Owain, and my first thought was that I too was paralysed. But no. I was lying alone in the single bedroom, dawn light seeping through the open curtains.
My heart was racing. I lay there until it had slowed, wondering what had happened to Owain. Not death, at least not yet: I had a continuing sense of his undeclared presence. But Legister had done something to incapacitate him. For once he had looked angry.
Had Owain actually killed Marisa? I could only find out by returning to him. And I had my own reasons. Like Owain I had a feeling that I was about to be exposed. I’d told Tanya everything but I had no idea what the consequences might be. Was my admission proof that I was making progress? It didn’t feel that way to me; if anything, there was a renewed sense of crisis.
For Owain it was literally a matter of life and death: for me it was a question of culpability. If my presence had somehow stimulated his assault on Marisa, I was partially responsible for whatever had happened to her.
I went into the bathroom to pee. The house was already warm, the blurred outlines of the garden visible through the dimpled window glass. I was afraid to look at myself in the mirror. In case I saw him there.
I flushed the toilet and went out on to the landing. There was no sound elsewhere in the house. Carefully I crossed to Tanya’s door. Slowly turned the handle.
She had locked it from inside.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“You must forgive me,” Carl Legister was saying to Owain without a trace of regret. “It was an infantile act, and one that inconvenienced all of us. Not least the men to whom I should be setting an example.”
They were in the back seat of Legister’s Bentley, which was moving along the street at a pace barely faster than walking, its engine noise muted.
The two CIF men sat in the front behind steel-meshed glass. They had bundled him down the Barracks steps and into the car, he semiconscious, completely numb from the neck down, breathing raggedly through his lolling mouth. Only now was the feeling beginning to return to his body.
“They tell me it’s a combination of an opiate and a motor inhibitor,” Legister remarked without looking at him. “N-pentathio something or other. One of the boffins at Porton Down christened it nepenthe.”
Owain managed to sit himself fully upright. The smell was now vaguely medicinal. The after-effects of the drug? Or did it come from Legister himself? Owain was drawn to notions of formaldehyde, as though the Secretary of State had been pickled, was no more really alive than the Silicon Chancellor. He gave off no body heat, was merely an animated object, instilled with sentience and intelligence but containing nothing visceral.
Legister gazed out the window as they drove along the Embankment, rolling a slender gold ring between his thumb and forefinger. It looked like one of Marisa’s but it hadn’t come from his quarters. They’d found only the tights.
The Bentley had special identification plates, was instantly recognisable. They passed through a checkpoint without delay, the duty guards coming to brisk attention, salutes held until they passed. Legister, hidden from their view behind mirrored bullet-proof glass, showed no interest.
Gingerly I probed Owain’s mind, but he still had no memory of what had happened the night before. Had I blacked him out? Possibly, but he’d woken in his own bed. Had he got rid of Marisa before succumbing to alcohol-induced amnesia? Or was it merely a symptom of a more general mental disintegration?
At present I had no answer. I could only wait and see what emerged.
The morning was bright, the sky filled with a seizure of magnesium light, as if someone had exploded an enormous flare. There were fewer civilians and more security police on the streets than usual. All the observation posts and gun emplacements they passed were fully manned.
The two CIF men in front had removed their helmets and replaced them with padded black forage caps. The younger man, who was driving, glanced into the back at one point. He was orange-haired, perhaps ten years younger than Owain, a sprinkling of acne blotching the florid skin of his face. Hazel eyes, whose irises appeared slightly inward-looking, giving the impression of perpetual intense yet mindless concentration.
The Bentley stopped outside a community medical centre, a green cross on a white disc painted above its entrance. The commander climbed a flight of steps into the building, walking past a straggly queue of civilians who were waiting to redeem their prescriptions. Though the main entrance was open, the shutters were still down on the dispensing hatches. Everyone was slouched patiently against a retaining wall, studiously not showing any lingering interest in the car.
Presently the commander came out, leading another man in a grubby white laboratory coat. He was Owain’s age, good-looking but with an apparent crook in his neck. Owain saw him shake his head when questioned. When he replied he squinted in the direction of the rooftops, as though anticipating sniper fire.
Owain became aware that Legister was looking at him.
“Dr Marcel Hanson?” Legister said, making it sound like a question.
Owain merely indicated his incomprehension.
“You’re not familiar with him?”
This time it was more of a statement than a query.