"It was a few years ago. I think. Seven or eight, maybe more." He didn't sound very convinced. "What about you, Amanda? Have there been any other incidents up here?"

"No, not that I can recall."

"What sort of incident?" Eleanor asked.

He gave her an abashed grin. "Can't remember. Definitely something newsworthy, though."

"And it's connected to the Kitchener murder?" she asked.

"Lord knows. I doubt it, not that long ago."

Launde Abbey was another hundred and fifty metres past the third lake, set in a broad curving basin that seemed to have been chiselled into the side of the valley. A wooden fence marked the boundary of the parkland. The EMC Ranger rattled over a cattle grid, and the grass magically reverted to a shaggy verdant green. Large black tree stumps were scattered about, each one accompanied by a new sapling—kauri pines, giant chinquapins, torreyas—healthy replacements that relished the heat, turning the park back to its original rural splendour. Tarmac reappeared under the tyres. Eleanor turned off the road which disappeared over the brow of the basin, and drove down the loop of drive to the Abbey.

She was somewhat disappointed with what she saw. She'd been expecting some great medieval monastery, all turrets and flying buttresses: reality was a three-storey Elizabethan manor house, built from ochre stone, with a broad frontage and projecting wings. The roof of grey-blue slate was broken by five gables, a row of solar panels capping the apex. There were two sets of chimney-stacks, one on each wing; three cream-white globes were perched amid the southern wing's stacks, weather coverings for the satellite dishes. Climbing roses scrambled over the stonework around the porch, scarlet and yellow blooms drooping from the weight of water they had absorbed, petals mouldering.

It backed on to a copse of high straggly pines, most of which had survived the Warming, their depleted ranks supplemented by some new banyan trees.

Two unmarked white vans and a Panda car were parked outside, belonging to the police crime scene team that had been combing the Abbey for clues since Friday. Eleanor drew up behind them. It was raining steadily and they made a dash for the porch.

A constable was waiting just inside, he saw Amanda and waved them all through. The interior was vaguely shabby, putting Eleanor in mind of a grand family fallen on hard times. The elegance still existed, in the furnishings, and décor—the staircase looked exquisite—but it had been almost neglected. Clean, but not polished.

Vernon Langley and Jon Nevin came in, shaking the rain from their jackets.

Langley took a breath. "I forgot to mention it before, Mandel," he said. "But the Abbey's lightware memory core has been wiped."

"So Amanda told me," Greg said drily.

Eleanor kept her grin to herself. One to the good guys.

"I see." He straightened his jacket. "Well, we've set up shop in the dining room, if you'd like to come through."

There was very little of the dining room table left visible. At one end the forensic team had set out their equipment, a couple of Philips laptop terminals and various boxy 'ware modules which Eleanor guessed were analysers of some kind, although one looked remarkably like a microwave oven. The rest of the table, about three-quarters, was covered in sealed polythene sample bags. She could see clothes, shoes, books, hologram cubes, a lot of kitchen knives, glasses, memox crystals, small porcelain dishes, candlesticks, even an old windup type clock. Some of them looked completely empty. Dust, or hair, she thought.

She was still puzzling over why they'd want to seal up a potted cactus when Vernon Langley introduced Nicolette Hutchins and Denzil Osborne, a pair of forensic investigators who had stayed on to continue the in situ examination. They had been drafted in from Leicestershire, part of a ten-strong team which the Home Office had ordered to the Abbey. Both of them were wearing standard blue police one-piece overalls. Nicolette Hutchins was in her forties, a small woman, with a narrow, slightly worn face, her dark hair wrapped in a tight bun. She glanced up from one of the modules she was engrossed with, and held out her hands. "Excuse me for not shaking." She was wearing surgeon's gloves.

Denzil Osborne had the kind of build Eleanor associated with ex-professional sportsmen, muscle bulk which was starting to round out and sag. He must have been in his late fifties, with a flat, craggy face, and receding blond hair tied into a neat pony-tail. He had a near permanent smile, showing off three gold teeth, a flashy anachronism.

He shook Greg's hand warmly. Then his smile broadened even wider when he took Eleanor's.

"And I'm very pleased to meet you."

The play-acting made her grin. His genuine welcome was a refreshing change from the rest of the investigating team.

"So, you were in the Mindstar Brigade, were you?" Denzil asked Greg.

"Yeah."

"I was in Turkey, Royal Engineers; worked with a Mindstar Lieutenant called Roger Hales."

Greg smiled. "Springer."

"That's right."

"We called him Springer because it didn't matter what kind of booby trap the Legion left behind, Roger could always spot it and trip it," Greg explained to Eleanor. "He had one of the best bloody short-range perceptive faculties in the outfit."

"Saved my arse enough times," Denzil said. "Those mullahs were getting plenty tricky towards the end of that campaign."

"No messing," Greg said.

"I was chuffed when I heard they were bringing you in. Our Nicolette here doesn't believe what you blokes can do."

"I do believe," she said, not looking up from the analyser module. "I just get bored with hearing about it day in day out. You'd think Turkey lasted for a decade the number of stories you tell."

"Well, don't worry, Greg won't bore you today," Denzil said. "Far from it. Today is the day when this investigation gets moving again. Right, Greg?"

"Do my best."

"You need something to fixate on?"

"No. I need data."

Denzil's eyebrows went up appreciatively. "Intuitionist?"

"Yeah."

"OK, what do you want to start with?"

"The security system," Eleanor said.

"No problems with that," Denzil answered. "It's all top-grade gear. Fully functional."

"Could an intruder melt through it, and then back out again, without leaving a trace?" Greg asked.

"Hell, no, it's built by Event Horizon; a customized job. Low-light photon amps, windows wired, internal-motion sensors, IR, plus UV laserscan. Unless your identity and three-dimensional image is loaded in the memory core you couldn't move a millimetre inside the building without the alarm screaming for help. And it's got a secure independent uplink to Event Horizon's private communication satellite network as well as the English Telecom West Europe geosync platform. Why? You think somebody got in here?"

"Possibly," said Greg. He explained his theory about the microlight, then went on to the contract Kitchener had been given with Event Horizon.

When he had finished even Nicolette Hutchins had abandoned her analyser module to listen. "That adds some unusual angles to our problem," she said with morbid interest. "Nobody was thinking along those lines when we arrived, we all thought it was a murder not an assassination. And it's too late to look for signs of a microlight landing now. There have been three heavyish rainfalls since Thursday night's storm. They would have washed the valley clean."

"Ever the optimist," Denzil retorted.

She shrugged, and returned to her LCD display.

"Hell, Greg, I don't know about a tekmerc penetration," Denzil said. "If it happened that way, then the software they used against the security core must have been premier grade. I wouldn't even know how to start writing it."