A Cast of Falcons by Steve Burrows Read Free Book Online

guided her back to the desk. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
    She nodded vacantly. She would not have resisted, it seemed, anything Maik might have suggested. He sat opposite her. He would have preferred to remain standing, but he sensed she needed the comfort of an equal now, a confidant, rather than an interrogator hovering over her. She stared blankly out the window, her brown eyes moist with repressed emotion. Perhaps she intended to save her response for later, for the privacy of her own home, rather than this unfeeling concrete bunker of a university research facility. But perhaps, too, this was the only face she ever intended to show to the world now. Perhaps she would try to deny her emotions from this point on, in the hope that, if only she could push them down deep enough inside her, they would cease to exist. Maik hoped not. It was an approach he knew was doomed to failure.
    â€œPhilip was such a decent man,” she said, without turning her gaze from the window. “Really, always thinking about the bigger picture, the greater good.” She seemed unable to look at him, this messenger who had brought her such horror. Instead, she stared with a strange detachment at a world outside this room, a world that held promise, and life, and joy. One that perhaps held no place for Xandria Grey anymore.
    Maik reached for his usual balm in these stilted situations. “This work you’re doing here,” he said, “its importance goes beyond the normal realms of academic curiosity, I understand.”
    Grey nodded vacantly, and then seemed to rally slightly, as if recognizing Maik’s intent to coax her from her sadness, and willing herself to respond to it. “Carbon capture and storage is going to be our primary defence against climate change in the future, but while there are many methods to recover industrially produced carbon, we were … we are looking at a new approach to storing the carbon once it’s been captured.”
    â€œWas Mr. Wayland close to a solution?”
    Grey bit her bottom lip, fighting to hold on to her composure. “Philip was leading a project to explore the viability of sequestering it through the use of carbon-fixing algae. He was convinced it would change the way we approach carbon storage.” Maik watched as she drifted off, gazing at a place beyond the papers on the desk, seemingly lost in her thoughts.
    â€œPerhaps we should wait until my DCI gets back,” he said softly, standing up. “I’m sure he’ll be interested in hearing about all this. I should probably be going, anyway. If you’re sure you’re going to be okay?”
    Grey stood up abruptly, as if to fight off the sorrow that was threatening to overwhelm her once again. “I’ll walk you back to the car park.”
    Maik began to protest that it wasn’t necessary, but she insisted. “It can be a bit of a rabbit warren out there,” she said, trying another of her pathetic smiles. “Besides, it will do me good to get out of this place for a while.”
    She grabbed a sheaf of paper from her desk and fell into step beside Maik. They walked in silence for a few moments, their footsteps echoing hollowly off the walls of the corridor.
    â€œMr. Wayland was well respected in his field, I understand,” said Maik tentatively, as if wary of highlighting the importance of his loss.
    Grey looked at him. “It’s all right, Sergeant. It upsets me to talk about Philip, but I can’t help that. You must ask whatever questions you need to. Philip was an acknowledged expert on the subject of carbon sequestration. It’s fair to say it was something of a coup for the university to land him, especially considering his long-standing relationship with Abrar el-Taleb.”
    â€œAnd nobody here resented his star status, anything like that?”
    Grey shook her head. “Perhaps some might have, if he had been thrust upon us as the new