The Sun Is God by Adrian McKinty Read Free Book Online Page A

demanded.
    â€œLet’s get out of here, I’m going to catch my death,” Will said.
    They put the blanket back on the body and left the room. Bremmer locked the cellar door and they climbed the stairs to the main floor of the hospital. It took all three of them a few seconds to cope with the transition from thirty degrees Fahrenheit to around eighty. Once they’d recovered, they resumed their walk to Queen Emma’s along the coastal track.
    Doctor Bremmer offered Will a cigarette and he accepted. A skinny, naked Kanak boy asked them in pidgin for tobacco and Will passed the cigarette on. They continued past the large buildings of the Forsayth Company where Doctor Parkinson (Frau Forsayth’s chargé d’affaires) stored coffee, cotton, and rubber from Queen Emma’s extensive plantations—so extensive in fact that they nearly doubled the amount of land owned and cultivated by the German New Guinea Company.
    The trail now took a sharp right turn and became a narrow palm-tree-lined boulevard that had recently been lit by small electric lamps on stubby iron poles—the only such piece of street lighting in all of German New Guinea, possibly in this part of the hemisphere. This path up to Gunantambu was swept and drained, too, which was just as well because by now Will’s “waterproof” Liverpool Rubber Company plimsolls were completely soaked.
    â€œShall I tell you what I think?” Will asked.
    â€œPlease do,” Kessler said.
    â€œIt could well be murder. They may have drowned him but they didn’t need to force the poor fella that hard. They’d given him enough opium to knock out the Derby winner. This explains the yellowing in the eyes and face, the swelling in the tongue . . .”
    â€œGo on,” Kessler said.
    â€œSo it could be that they rendered him pliable with the opium, took him to the nearest rock pool, and drowned him. Those bruises on his shoulders might be where they held him down.”
    â€œMore than one of them?” Kessler asked.
    â€œI believe so. There is still the chance that it was an accident or a possible suicide. He ingests the opium and wanders to the sea for a little night swimming or self-murder, but I think not.”
    â€œBecause of this bruising?” Doctor Bremmer asked.
    â€œThat for one, but also the fact that he wasn’t in the water for any length of time. Gradually the skin on the palms and soles of a body becomes white and wrinkled in water and after seven or eight hours can be peeled back. Saw an instance like that in Gibraltar once. Suicide. But it’s not the case with Herr Lutzow, is it?”
    â€œNo,” Bremmer said.
    â€œAnd another thing,” Will continued. “His body had no shark bites. Corpses that have spent any time in these waters tend to attract the attention of the tiger sharks, do they not, Klaus?”
    â€œYes,” the German assented.
    â€œBut what motive could there be for murder?” Bremmer asked.
    â€œWe must endeavor to discover it,” Kessler said.

5
    QUEEN EMMA'S SOIRÉE
    T hey were met at the ornate portico of Queen Emma’s house, Gunantambu, by Evans, the saturnine, starchy, Australian maître d’hôtel. “Come along gents, the lady of the house is hungry and wants her dinner. You are all very late!” he said in a counterfeit English butler’s accent.
    â€œI do not think we are late. As a matter of—” Kessler began, taking out his watch.
    â€œCome on gents, no time for that, go right in,” Evans said.
    Kessler and Doctor Bremmer walked into the dining room, but Will, who was in the rear, found his wrist grabbed and held firmly in Evans’s surprisingly undainty paw.
    â€œWhat do you think you’re doing?” Will said.
    â€œI know you,” Evans said in his native, rather intimidating, Sydney Cove diphthongs. “I’ll be keeping an eye on the silver, mate, so don’t even