Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [108]
“What’s happened?” Damon asked without preamble.
“Thank you for calling, Mr. Hart,” the inspector said with a determined formality that only served to emphasize the falseness of his carefully contrived inscrutability. “There are several matters I’d like to discuss with you.” The inspector’s eyes were bleak, and Damon knew that things must have taken a turn for the worse—but he also knew that Yamanaka would want to work to a carefully ordered script. The inspector knew that Damon was holding out on him, and he didn’t like it.
“Go on,” Damon said, meekly enough.
“Firstly, we’ve received the medical examiner’s final report on the body discovered in the house where Miss Caisson was arrested. DNA analysis confirms that it’s the body of Surinder Nahal. The ME estimates that the time of death was at least two hours before Miss Caisson and Madoc Tamlin arrived on the scene, so we’re certain that they didn’t kill him, but it has become a matter of great urgency that we see the VE pak which your friend removed from the scene. We have reason to believe that it might contain valuable evidence as to the identity of the real killer and the motive for the crime.”
What reason? Damon wondered. “I’d be very interested to see it myself,” he countered warily. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to contact Madoc. I presume, then, that you’ll be releasing Diana immediately?”
“I’m afraid not,” Yamanaka told him. “The local police are still considering the possibility of charging her with illegal entry—and she was of course an accessory to the assault.”
“So charge her and bail her out.”
“I’m reluctant to do that until I’ve talked to Madoc Tamlin,” the inspector told him.
“You can’t hold her hostage, Mr. Yamanaka.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Yamanaka assured him, “but until Tamlin and the VE pak are safely in my hands, I can’t be sure of the exact extent of her culpability.” The virtual atmosphere was still heavily pregnant with some vital item of information that Yamanaka was carefully withholding.
Damon fought to suppress his annoyance, but it wasn’t easy. “You must know as well as I do that the VE pak is an ill-wrapped parcel of red herring that’s already begun to stink,” he told the inspector waspishly. “The same is probably true of its resting place.”
Yamanaka didn’t raise an eyebrow, but it seemed to Damon that the policeman’s synthesized gaze became more tightly focused. “Do you have any evidence to support the conjecture that the body is not that of Surinder Nahal?” the inspector asked sharply.
“No, I don’t,” Damon admitted, “but the evidence that it is could have been cooked up by a biotech team with the necessary expertise just as easily as a fake VE tape. If whoever is behind the kidnapping really is convinced for some reason that Conrad Helier faked his own death, it would be only natural for him to hire a bioengineer with a similar background to repeat the trick. Ask yourself, Inspector Yamanaka—if you were in that position, who would you have hired to do the job?”
“I’m a policeman, Mr. Hart,” Yamanaka reminded him. “However difficult it may be, my job is to collect evidence and build cases. You, on the other hand, are a citizen. Your duty, however you might resent it, is to obey the law and give what assistance you can to my investigation. That VE pak was taken from a crime scene, which makes it evidence—and I’d be very annoyed if anyone tampered with it before handing it in.”
“If I can get the VE pak for you,” Damon said bluntly, “will you drop all the charges against Madoc and Diana?”
“That’s not my decision,” Yamanaka replied unyieldingly.
Damon gritted his teeth and paused for a few seconds, instructing himself to remain calm. “What else?” he asked. “What’s happened to heat things up?”
“We’ve found another body,” the inspector told him bleakly.
“Karol’s?” Damon asked, although he knew that was the lesser of the two probable evils.
“No—Silas Arnett’s. He was found in a body bag dumped in the middle of a road up in the Hollywood Hills. Police officers conducting a routine search of the neighborhood found a chair