The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [116]
“I don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about, Lisa,” Helen replied stubbornly. “Just put Mike on, will you?”
“Mike knows everything, Helen. For the moment, he and Chan Kwai Keung are the only two who do know—but as I said, it’s a matter of hours. Going after Chan was a mistake, by the way. His guilty conscience was reflecting on sins of his own. I can see why Stella and her friend jumped to the wrong conclusion, but it really was a masterpiece of bad judgment.”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this,” Helen said. The ambiguity was so neat that Lisa felt free to assume that the other woman had regained most of her composure.
“I’m trying to make it clear to you that you no longer have anything to lose by talking to me, and maybe everything to gain. I want to make you an offer.”
“An offer I can’t refuse?” Helen countered, although the attempted wit rang hollow.
“I don’t blame you for thinking I must be involved,” Lisa said. “It was a perfectly natural assumption. I don’t blame you or Stella for refusing to take my denials seriously. If I can’t understand why Morgan never let me in on his little secret, how could you? I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I must be lying now. If I were in your position, that’s exactly what I’d be thinking. But consider this, Helen. In a few hours, everyone else will know what I know. I could tip them off right now if I wanted to heed the call of duty. I could have called Judith Kenna, Peter Grimmett Smith, or the mysterious Mr. Leland instead of you, and then I could have gone back to the Renaissance Hotel to sleep all day, knowing that I’d wake up to find the whole thing tidied up—and I’m certainly tired enough. For the first time in months, I’m tired enough to do exactly that. My job was as good as lost already, but the moment I phoned you instead of Smith, I made absolutely certain that I’m finished. Careerwise, the fact that I’m talking to you now is suicide.”
“It sounds more like madness to me,” Helen Grundy observed, still careful not to commit herself to any recordable admission that she knew what Lisa was talking about.
“Maybe,” Lisa admitted. “But the fact is, I want to know. I want to know why every initial assumption I made about this case has proved false. I want to know why I was so ludicrously mistaken about the nature of my relationship with Morgan Miller that I was unable to believe he’d kept a secret from me for all these years. I want to know why he never gave me the opportunity to be the kind of traitor you and Stella Filisetti think I am.”
“I don’t see how any of this concerns me,” Helen Grundy said, a faint trace of contempt creeping into her voice.
“Use your imagination, Helen. You haven’t got anything tangible out of Morgan. You haven’t found anything on the hard disks of his old PC’s and you haven’t found any backups among the wafers and sequins you stole from my apartment. All you’ve got today is what Stella managed to put together before she told you that if you didn’t act quickly, you’d never get another chance, because her spying activities were bound to be uncovered. You can’t get anything you can trust out of Morgan, because he knows as well as you do that it’s just a matter of hanging on till rescue comes. If I know Morgan only half as well as I thought I did, I’d guess that he’s been feeding you bullshit by the ream ever since you picked him up, and I’ll bet a million euros to a bent bingo token that it would take an army of scientists thirty years to sort out fact from fantasy.
“I presume that you and Arachne and the hard core of the sisterhood