The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts

Author:Adam Roberts [Roberts, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2017-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

12: Bang

She asked herself: What to do? And then she asked it again; and pretty soon it had acquired its own rhythm, running around her brain: what tudoo what tudoo what tudoo. She wanted to stay, to be close to Marguerite, but if she did that she would be rat-in-a-trapped by her own apartment. She had to get away. But the authorities would surely take a fool-me-twice view of her returning yet again in another four hours. They would be waiting.

Cross that bridge, I guess.

Alma got to her feet, rubbed her face, and stepped through into the sitting room.

Colonel Mastema was standing there. And that was, sure enough, a handgun in her right hand, and pointing straight at Alma.

‘Not much of a barricade,’ she noted. ‘That chair.’

‘I was improvising under pressure,’ said Alma.

‘Sit down,’ said Mastema, gesturing to the sitting room’s Confort 9000 with her gun. ‘Take a load off.’

‘I prefer to stand.’

‘Suit yourself. Ms Alma, you are a more troublesome citizen than I first realised. I apologise for underestimating you.’

‘I’m not troublesome in the least,’ said Alma, looking past Mastema to the open door.

There was no way to get to it. There was no way to cover the ground between her and the colonel before she had time to shoot. Her options were, she figured, to allow herself to be arrested, or to try and jump Mastema. Neither was a very attractive possibility. Her previous experience suggested that arrest would not be rescinded in time to get back to Marguerite in four hours. But struggling with a training intelligence operative, and one moreover who had a gun aimed directly at her, ran the risk of serious injury or even death. And Alma could not afford to get killed. If she were killed, then Marguerite would die.

That could not be permitted to happen.

She took a step towards Mastema, closing the distance between them. The colonel raised her weapon, and aimed it directly at Alma’s face.

‘Troublesome,’ Mastema said again.

‘I’m really no trouble,’ Alma said. ‘I’ll do whatever you require of me, if only you permit me to attend medically to my partner in there. Once every four hours I’ll need to be here, otherwise I’m all yours.’

‘My dear girl,’ said Mastema, ‘you’re all mine whatever we do. There’s a dead body right outside your apartment block. Do you know that?’

‘Dead,’ said Alma, feeling ill. ‘You killed Punchy. It was you.’

‘Killed. Hmm. That does seem to keep happening to people you’ve just met, doesn’t it? Can you really blame the authorities for considering you troublesome? Trouble does seem to following you around.’

Slowly, Alma put her hands up, palms out, in front of her chest. ‘I can help you.’

‘Can and will,’ agreed Mastema. ‘The gentleman outside gave you something, before he died.’

There was little point in denying it. ‘He shunted it to my feed. I didn’t ask him to.’

‘I don’t care whether you asked him to or not,’ said the colonel. She looked severely at Alma. ‘I don’t care about him, and I certainly don’t care about you.

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