Turquoiselle by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online

record, that
is it. The old days of course were different. As they say, that was then .”
    “I
didn’t speak to her the way I seem to be speaking on the disc.”
    Latham,
non-vocal, pursed his lips.
    “I
told her myself to go to Jack Stuart at once. I said I couldn’t help, she had to see to
it.”
    “How
odd,” said Latham, in a quick, flighty, bantering way. “I wonder what it was
she did though. Or did
she let you in on it, Carver? After she turned the 3P off – or whatever happened
to it. It sounded to me rather as if it had been dropped. But then she must
just have grabbed it, mustn’t she, and run for cover. Was that it? Frustrating.
It must have been. Last straw. What you were doing, you were playing her along,
weren’t you, trying to tease it out of her. I can quite see that. Then you
could just have gone straight to Stuart yourself and spilled the full Heinz.
Yes?”
    “No,”
Carver said stonily. He stared at Latham, into Latham’s pouchy clever eyes. “However
that disc was prepared – sampling, a backtrack from the park and then a voice
mimic for me, perhaps – I didn’t say anything about her telling me, and my
helping her out. I actively discouraged that. I told her not to tell me, to tell
only Stuart, and as quickly as she could. Or if she couldn’t face him, go to you.”
    “Me.”
    “Yes.”
    “Well,”
Latham’s eyelids had gradually folded to half-closed, as Carver had seen them
do now and then over a drink, a steak, an ice-cream. “It’s an odd one, isn’t
it? What was it you suggested? And actor mimicking your voice? That’s a rare
thought. Normally detectible. And why? The disc,” Latham added softly, “was
found in her bag, on the floor of the Ladies. Luckily the thing was in its
casing, so the blood didn’t get into it. It could have been cleaned up. But mucky.”
    Carver
had stopped talking. Latham did not believe him.
    Understandably.
Third Persons were reckoned
impervious virtually to anything, no blood, no human meddling could eliminate
or distort their message. The very latest backroom science. And so, Carver was
lying.
    Did
Latham therefore think Carver, having failed to get in on whatever tempting
treachery or idiocy Silvia Dusa had undertaken, had later killed her? How had
he done that , then? There
were no drugs in her system or marks elsewhere on her body. She had not been,
presumably, blind drunk. So Carver, perhaps sneaking in from the smoker’s
garden, had told her to sit back on the loo floor, put on plastic gloves, and
then neatly cut her wrist vein lengthways, without an objection, or a single
razorous slip.
    He
imagined Latham would have to detain him, no doubt leaving him first to stew,
then suggesting Carver sleep over on the sixth floor, where there were a series
of cell-like bedrooms, used for the nocturnal sojourns of those on duty, on
watch, exhausted, or held in mild-mannered custody.
    But
Latham merely suggested they go down to the foyer-hall, where Latham could
access transport, and Ken could arrange for Carver another fake cab.
    “Oh,
just one last thing perhaps I ought to show you,” Latham remarked in a
throwaway style, as they descended to the third floor. The lift, already
programmed, halted. Carver noted Latham, as Jack Stuart was inclined to, seemed
to be repeating a lot of the same words – just , last . Did it mean something? Or was it just one last gambit to
induce, (or allay?) unease?
    They
walked into one of the small side rooms. Latham hit the lights and woke the automatic
on the computer. The large screen brightened, and without pause flooded up the
static drowned image of a dead woman on a mortuary slab. Dusa,naturally.
    How
young, how agonisingly un-grownup she looked. No, she was not in her forties. This
was a well developed teenager, sixteen, eighteen, perhaps. And how dead.
    It
was a fact some corpses, for by now Carver had been shown, both on screen and
in photographs, several, could look startlingly youthful. But in converse