"You're getting to be a real bully with that," Eleanor observed. She was sitting in a chair opposite the settee, out of the flatscreen camera's pick-up field.

"Yeah; feels pretty good, too." He spread his arms out along the back of the settee with a gratuitous sigh.

She gave him a derisory sneer in return.

Stocken Hall's director appeared on the flatscreen, sitting behind his desk, wearing a smart blue suit. The picture window's blinds were closed, as before.

"Mr Mandel, I believe congratulations are in order." A warm regular smile displayed perfect teeth.

"The police have a suspect in custody, yeah."

"Excellent news. Perhaps the media will now leave us all alone."

"Don't bet your life on it."

"No. Quite. How may I help you? My secretary said you were calling on urgent Home Office business."

"Tell you, I need some information on the way the human brain works, specifically in your field: memories. That suspect, Nicholas Beswick, he actually managed to fool me. Now he's the very first person ever to have done that. As you can imagine, that makes me a little nervous."

"Indeed. By fooling you, do you mean your empathic sense?"

"Yeah. He said he didn't do it and I believed him. You see, there was no evasion, no duplicity. Any mention of that murder should have triggered his memory of the event, and with it all the usual associated feelings of guilt and remorse. But I didn't sense a single suggestion of iniquity or deception. His mind appeared utterly normal, nothing at all like that cracked monster Liam Bursken."

"I see. It does seem somewhat strange."

"What I wanted to know was: is it possible he could deliberately make himself forget? I mean, even subconsciously; just wipe the murder from his brain? Beswick is still claiming he hasn't done it, even though the evidence is pretty conclusive. I remembered you mentioned some kind of drug which would cause forgetfulness."

MacLennan's smile downgraded to serious concern. "Scopolamine. Yes. It's a common enough substance, extracted from plants. Normally it's employed as a mild sedative, and for travel sickness. And it has been used for ritual purposes for several centuries. But large doses can be used to induce what amounts to a trance state. There have been many cases of scopolamine intoxication identified, especially in Latin America. It was quite a problem with criminal gangs around the turn of the century. If you mix it with a tranquilizer it can be used to render someone completely docile. And it can be administered with a simple spray. Under its influence people would hand over their valuables, even empty their bank accounts from cash dispensers, and then have no recollection of ever doing so. It went out of fashion when the cashless society became firmly established, of course. Money transfers can be traced too easily these days."

"Jesus." The idea was unnerving, muggers armed with aerosols instead of knives, and you knew nothing about it until hours later when you returned to reality in a daze. He didn't like that at all—maybe it had happened to him already, how could he tell? — but then drugs always left him cold. "Could Beswick have taken scopolamine to forget the murder?"

"Oh, no. It doesn't work that way. Besides, I'm sure the police would have found traces of it in his blood."

"Yeah." But would they have checked for it? "I'll ask." He loaded a note in his cybofax. "Is there any other method you can think of?"

MacLennan gazed inwardly for a moment. "As I told you, memory is perhaps the least explored facet of the human brain. However, there are two types of natural amnesia which I would offer as applicable in this case."

"Two?"

"Indeed. A condition called transient global amnesia allows its victims to perform their usual jobs and maintain their standard behaviour pattern. But at the end of the day they cannot remember any event which occurred. An example: you could hold a long and intricate conversation with them, to which they would respond entirely within character; yet if you asked them about it the next day they would have no recollection of ever having talked to you."

"Is there any way of telling if someone suffers from it?"

"The person concerned will often realize for themselves, especially if the condition is acute. It's not very common, but a doctor would certainly be able to recognize the symptoms from what the patient was describing."

"Right, thank you." Greg made another series of notes on his cybofax. "What is the second condition?"

"Trauma erasure, which is even rarer; but there have been recorded and verified instances where it has occurred."

"Such as?"

"A certain type of event, often violent or terrifying. Something literally so horrible that the mind simply rejects it. A particularly bloody road accident, for instance. People have witnessed them, and then failed even to remember they were present when questioned afterwards. Police often have to deal with mugging victims who cannot remember what their attacker looked like even though they were in close proximity for several minutes. But it would have to be an extraordinarily potent event to trigger such a radical neural mechanism?

"An event like a grisly murder?"

"Yes, indeed. If Beswick acted in a fit of rage, he may not have been able to accept what he had done once that rage wore off. Under those circumstances trauma erasure may have been enacted. I offer no guarantees, of course, I am merely generalizing."

"I understand. If Beswick is suffering from one of these types of amnesia, would a psychiatrist be able to coax the memory out?"

"I don't know. It depends how deeply it is buried. You say it is beyond even subconscious recall?"

"Yes."

"Hypnosis may give us access. But from what you've said I wouldn't hold out much hope. In any case, it would definitely be a long-term project. There would be a lot of counselling required first, he would have to want to recover the memories."

"I see. Well, thank you for your time."

"Not at all."

"We're not exactly helping our cause, are we?" Eleanor said after MacLennan's mechanical smile vanished from the flatscreen.

"Not a lot, no. But at least we know it is theoretically possible for Beswick to forget he murdered Kitchener. It explains why my interview with him was such a dud."

"It might help rebuild your confidence in your psi ability, but it's also a terrific bonus for the prosecution," she said indignantly.

"Hey, you were the one that told his parents we'd continue the investigation."

"Yes, I know." She folded her arms like a rebuked child, giving the carpet a moody stare.

He squirted another number at the flatscreen. Amanda Paterson answered, and once more the Home Office authorization was deployed like a blunt weapon.

"I know what I'd tell you to do with it," Eleanor murmured airily, her gaze switching to the ceiling.

The flatscreen showed a slightly out of focus view of the Oakham CID office, a couple of detectives working at their desks, the situation screen on the back wall still displaying a map of the town and surrounding countryside. Vernon Langely's face slid across the picture as he sat down facing the camera. "I was interviewing Nicholas Beswick," the detective admonished.

"How's it going?" Greg asked.

"Would you believe the little cretin still says he didn't do it? We've even shown him the report on the knife, confirming the fingerprints on the handle are his. He claims he was framed. Christ, and they all said he was the smartest of the bunch. Makes me wonder what the thick one must be like."

"Yeah, it's a real poser, isn't it?" Greg had felt like this once before, demob happy. When it didn't matter what he said to the brass, they couldn't do a thing about it. This time it was the sheer audacity of going up against ridiculous odds, confounding authority, which was producing an anarchistic glee.