House of Dust (33 page)

“Which is?” Katharine asked.

I drew back from the huddle and looked across at the now silent helijet. People were coming out of the exits, most of them in the dark suits worn by Raphael's administrative staff. I wondered if they'd come from Edinburgh.

“Which is?” she repeated.

I smiled. “I'll tell you later. How about a glass of sherry in my rooms at seven o'clock?”

Davie laughed. “Only if it's a pint glass.”

I didn't even know he liked sherry.

Katharine went off to the Radcliffe Camera on foot, while Davie took me up to the science area in the Chariot. Conversation was muted at first; there's nothing like the thought that you're being monitored to shut you up. But, to keep up appearances, we managed a debate about whether the students of New Oxford could get away with doing as little work as some of my contemporaries at university in Edinburgh had. The young people's sober faces and purposeful gait showed how spurious the discussion was.

“Right,” I said, as the Chariot drew up outside the dark glass of the Metallurgy building. “I'll see you later. You keep the wheels.”

Davie nodded, watching me thoughtfully as I walked away. There was no point in telling him where I was going, even by tapping the words out on the back of his hand – I didn't know Morse. Anyway. I'd had to find out from my nostrum where the place I wanted was located, so my interest might well have been noted already. The fifty-foot-high smoked glass and white concrete block I was headed for was located right in the middle of the science complex, though the panel above the main entrance wasn't displaying a science faculty name. These laboratories belonged to the Faculty of Criminology, one of the university's largest if the old don Elias Burton was to be believed – and this was the Department of Forensic Chemistry.

I went through the same procedure as we'd experienced at the Department of Metallurgy. My control card got me past the sensors. In the vacant reception area I was greeted, or rather accosted, by another imperious mechanical voice. I kept quiet and waved my card around. A door ahead of me slid open. I got about five paces beyond it when I was met by a familiar face.

“Citizen Dalrymple.” The blonde young woman gave me a restrained smile. She was wearing a white lab coat over the black bulldog suit she'd had on the last time I saw her.

“It's Haskins, isn't it?” I said. “You were running the Viewing Room in the Radcliffe Camera yesterday.”

She nodded once.

“Taking chemistry lessons in your spare time?”

She eyed me dubiously; humour definitely wasn't the bulldogs' strong suit. “This facility and the Camera both come under the aegis of the Faculty of Criminology,” she said.

“You mean Doctor Connington's in charge of all law and order concerns?”

Haskins looked at me like I was a four year old. “The junior— The proctor's role is largely ceremonial.” That would explain why we'd been fobbed off with him. “The faculty is run directly by the Hebdomadal Council.”

“So much for academic independence,” I said ironically.

That went over her head.

“Is there something I can help you with, citizen?” she asked. Her tone was efficient as well as officious.

“Call me Quint.” I looked at her. “What's your first name?”

Haskins stiffened. Spots of colour appeared on her cheeks. “Bulldogs are not permitted to disclose their first names.”

That made me think of the way auxiliaries in Edinburgh had to stick to their barracks numbers – one of the many similarities I'd begun to notice between the apparently dissimilar states. “Come on,” I wheedled, “you can tell me. I'm an outsider. I won't let on.”

She hesitated. “Oh, very well. My name is Harriet.”

Just what you'd expect a dark blue stocking to be called. “Right. So, Harriet, are you a chemist?”

She shook her head. “No. But we're moved around all the departments during our training. I've done some time in the forensics labs.”

“You know your way around here?” I asked, peering down the brightly lit corridor. The walls on both sides were solid, the only sign of doors coming from the small touch screens at chest height.

Harriet Haskins nodded. “What is it that you need, citi— I mean, Quint?” She stumbled over my name to demonstrate that she wasn't comfortable using it.

I held up my notebook. It was open at the page on which I'd copied down the details of the drug found in George Fauld's veins: the combined anaesthetic, anti-infection, amnesia-inducing compound. That was why I was in the labs. Administrator Raphael hadn't made any reference to it, either in Edinburgh or on the way to New Oxford, so the impression given was that, unlike the bullet, it didn't originate in this city. I wanted to see if I could establish if that was the case. And not only that: if the compound didn't come from Oxford, these high-tech labs with their transnational backers should at least be able to identify its provenance.

The blonde bulldog ran her nostrum over the page. “I presume you want a check run on this?” She turned her shapely form away from me and spoke into the device round her neck.

I nodded. “Who produces it? Is it available in New Oxford? That sort of thing.” I felt my stomach flip as the floor suddenly started moving. “Thanks for the warning, Harriet,” I complained.

“My pleasure,” she said, smiling briefly. “Quint.”

Sometimes first-name terms are more trouble than they're worth.

I spent the next hour giving myself an unguided tour of the Forensic Chemistry facility. Harriet Haskins offered to show me around; in fact, she tried to insist that I play Follow My Leader with her in the starring role. That was when I got tough and reminded her that my Hebdomadal Council authority gave me free, unaccompanied access everywhere. She gave a little pout that made her look even more fetching, then retired to a corner office to sulk and call her superiors, probably in reverse order.

I wandered around the banks of computer terminals and gleaming equipment, smiling encouragingly at the researchers like a visiting head of state from the time when heads of state could temporarily leave home; when the drugs wars kicked in across Europe presidents and monarchs had to barricade themselves inside their palaces, but the mobs still got most of them. The chemists and technicians knew that I must have had clearance. I remembered what happened to Maddy Pitt's dog when it jumped up against the Chariot. I was pretty sure that anyone trying to enter university premises would get pulsed terminally. But the white-coated ones were still keeping their eyes off me, trying to pretend I wasn't there. I hadn't realised my dress sense was so offensive.

“Where do the toxicologists work?” I asked a skinny guy with pimples who was wearing what I assumed was a college tie. He was busy directing a flow of green liquid around an array of glass tubes.

He glanced round and I saw that Harriet had appeared at the work surface further along from us. She gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“Fourth floor,” the researcher said, his voice reedy and heavily accented. Italian, I reckoned.

“
Grazie
,” I said, giving him a broad grin. That seemed to terrify him. Maybe he thought I was after his body.

I turned and walked quickly over to Haskins. “You're beginning to piss me off, Harriet,” I said in her ear. “Go back to your screens and follow what I do on them, all right? Otherwise it's the end of a beautiful friendship.”

She tossed her head and strode away. I smiled to myself. She could watch where I went and listen to what I said if she wanted, but she couldn't see inside my head; you develop a talent for living inside yourself in Enlightenment Edinburgh.

I went up to the fourth floor and was taken down an identical moving corridor. It stopped by a touch screen and, before I could attempt to activate it, a door appeared in the wall. Even the building knew where I was going. I'd have to do something about that.

I found myself in another large laboratory, the atmosphere tinged by something unpleasant like a blue cheese that had begun to liquefy. None of the men and women at work paid any attention to me. That was fine. It was me who wanted to pay attention to them. Because the other reason I'd come to the department was Lister 25, Edinburgh's missing chief toxicologist. I had no evidence linking him to New Oxford, but there seemed to be more connections between the two cities than I'd realised. I was also thinking of the message written in blood above my bed. Was this another road that led to Oxford? It was worth checking.

Except, of course, it was a waste of time. I understood that as I walked up and down between the rows of work stations, looking for an elderly specimen with heavy jowls humming Robert Johnson songs. There was no sign of him, though they'd had plenty of time to get him out the back way if they'd wanted to. There were no unoccupied desks and no untidy experiments that betrayed the signs of a hasty departure.

My nostrum chirped and Harriet Haskins appeared on the small screen.

“Citizen Quint,” she said, frowning and trying to focus her eyes. There must have been a miniature camera on the device that relayed a picture of the respondent.

“Bulldog Haskins,” I replied in kind.

“We do not use our rank as a title,” she said, her voice sounding robotic through the nostrum's speaker.

“Mea culpa,” I said. “And you want?”

“I want?” she asked, hesitating. “Oh, I see. I've got the results of the check we've run on your mystery compound.”

“Surprise me,” I said, holding the metallic device in front of my face. “It was developed and produced by Nox Pharmaceuticals for the lucrative Chinese sex industry.”

Now she was staring at me. “Do you want this information or not?”

“Proceed, Harriet,” I said, wondering if my flippancy had put her off her stride. I had a feeling I was about to be fed a heap of ox excrement.

“The compound in question does not feature in any of the university's databanks,” she said, looking straight at me from the display. “It is completely unknown, I'm afraid.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure you wrote down the specification correctly?”

“Oh yes,” I said, slipping the nostrum cord over my head. “Thanks for your input, Harriet. See you soon.” I put the device into the back pocket of my trousers, hoping she approved of the new camera angle.

It was time to turn the heat up.

As the lift took me down to the ground floor, I pondered the ethics of what I was about to do. It wasn't long before I gave myself the green light. This was the only way I could make sure Lister 25 wasn't on the premises.

When the lift door hissed open, I stuck my head out and ascertained that no one was around. It seemed that everyone who worked in the department stayed at their desks until their shift was complete; presumably they each had a personal chamber pot under their feet. Then I kneeled down in the corner of the lift, tore out some blank pages from my notebook and took the box of matches I'd imported from Edinburgh out of my jacket pocket. Fire one. I pressed plus six on the panel, wondering how quickly the smoke detectors would smell a rat. Not immediately. The door closed behind me and there was a sigh as the lift moved upwards again.

I exited the building and took up position behind a low hedge. From there I could see the exit from the emergency staircase on the right of the building as well as the main door. As soon as I squatted down, there was a shrill blast from what sounded like a full horn section of sirens, both inside and outside the Forensic Chemistry block. The blaring was interspersed by a shrill mechanical voice proclaiming, “Evacuate! Evacuate!”

Which is what the occupants did, at high speed. I had difficulty keeping track of them and had to bob up and down and from left to right to ensure that Lister 25 didn't escape me. After a couple of minutes there must have been several hundred flustered people in white coats assembling obediently in designated areas away from the block. My small fire must have ignited the plastic surface of the lift's floor. But there wasn't any sign of the old toxicologist.

Then things really did start to hot up. There was a blast of mobile sirens and three large silver vehicles shot up the access road, the late afternoon sun glinting from their pipework and windscreens. Numerous hefty individuals in metallic blue suits and masked helmets leaped down and started hauling hoses. I turned back from them towards the building and saw Harriet Haskins stepping towards me, an expression that was definitely not friendly on her face. And at the same moment I saw something that made me jerk back as if my eyes had been stung by the deadly killer bees that decimated Paris in 2003.

I blinked involuntarily at what I'd seen. Or rather, at the people I'd seen. There were four of them, on their way out of the fire exit. Two were bulldogs, one without his bowler hat on, but I wasn't interested in them. The man and woman they were protecting were the ones who had made me flinch. It was only about thirty hours since I'd seen the male with the goatee beard in Raphael's suite in Edinburgh. On reflection, it wasn't that much of a surprise that Glasgow's first secretary was here. He'd made no secret of his city's connections with Oxford.

It was his female companion who really rocked me back on my heels. Dressed in dark blue overalls, she was thinner than she had been when I last saw her in October 2026. Her face with the button nose was gaunt and lined. But her hair was exactly as it had been, the thick brown curls cut short. Jesus. Hel Hyslop, former chief inspector in the All-Glasgow Major Crime Squad. She was supposed to be locked up permanently in the secure unit at Barlinnie. What was the woman who'd been involved in some of the most gruesome murders I'd ever investigated doing on the loose with Andrew Duart?

Even more perplexing, what was she doing on the loose with him in Chief Administrator Raphael's New Oxford?