Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [107]
“I’ve already figured out who killed Delgado,” Solari announced, blandly.
Matthew guessed as soon as the bombshell dropped that it was probably a ploy, but no one else seemed ready to make that assumption. The reaction was as explosive as anyone could have desired, and the question on everyone’s lips was who?
“Unfortunately,” Solari went on, “there’s a difference between knowing who did it and providing evidence adequate to satisfy a court of law, or even justify a formal arrest. Given that a court of law would actually have to be put together in order to try the case, and that no formal procedures of arrest and charge seem to exist, I’m not sure exactly how to carry my investigation forward. Perhaps you’d like to advise me.”
“This is bullshit,” Rand Blackstone objected. “If you think you know who did it, spit it out. Give whoever it is a chance to respond.”
Matthew noticed that Blackstone’s preference for the hypothesis that an alien had done the deed seemed to have vanished. He was not surprised.
Neither was Solari. “If you’d wanted to know who did it you could have figured it out for yourselves,” he said. “I’m prepared to believe that Milyukov was wrong about there being a conspiracy to conceal the identity of the murderer, but there’s certainly been a tacit agreement not to look too hard. If you’d wanted the matter cleared up, you could have cleared it up. I think every one of you has a suspect in mind, and that at least half of you probably have the right suspect in mind, but not one of you wants to have that suspicion confirmed—and in order to avoid that eventuality you’ve deliberately refrained from looking at the evidence.”
“That’s not true.” The objection came from Lynn Gwyer—but no one else supported her.
“What’s the bottom line, Solari?” Blackstone wanted to know. “Are you saying that you want everyone to remain here while you complete your interrogations, or just that you want to take someone out of the crew?”
So Blackstone thinks that the murderer is one of the people who was planning to take the boat, Matthew deduced. Given that we’ve just eliminated Tang, that leaves Lynn, Ike, and Dulcie. Except, of course, that Blackstone might not have the right suspect in mind.
“For the time being,” Solari said, “I’d like to know what you want. There is, after all, a definite problem of jurisdiction here. The law I’m supposed to be enforcing is colony law—but there doesn’t seem to be any firmly defined colony law in place. As Dr. Gwyer has pointed out, the removal of Shen Chin Che and his chief associates from the picture has left something of an organizational vacuum. I’m not at all sure to whom I’m supposed to be reporting the results of my investigation, so for the time being I’m consulting you. Frankly, I’m rather puzzled by the fact that you all seem perfectly content to accept that there’s a murderer in your midst. Not one of you seems interested in having the identity of the murderer revealed, let alone seeing them punished. I wish you’d explain to me exactly why that is—preferably without any nonsense about the possibility of anyone from outside having secretly flown in to commit the murder.”
Matthew would have been interested to know where each of the six looked in search of leadership, but he hadn’t enough eyes in his head. In the event, it was Tang Dinh Quan who took it upon himself to provide an answer of sorts.
“That too is a question that we have not aired in public,” the biochemist said. “It is probable that we all have our own reasons for letting the matter lie. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I suspect that I am not the only one here to feel a profound sense of embarrassment at the mere fact of the crime. I cannot