The Foreigners Read online

  The chorus of voices dwindled as Foreigners made their choices. With the Sirens they had hired filing after them like ducklings behind their mothers, they headed for the taxi-gondolas that were waiting along the esplanade’s edge. Soon all the golden giants were gone, and the conventional human hubbub that had prevailed prior to their arrival resumed, albeit less loudly, the number of Sirens present having been reduced by almost half.

  Parry and Johansen met up again by the canal.

  “Next time we do this, I’m bringing along some cotton wool,” the lieutenant said, gouging one ear with a forefinger.

  “If there is a next time, it won’t be for a while.” Parry filled Johansen in on what he had learned from the Scottish castrato.

  “The Conservatorio. So he was properly trained, this Henderson. A pro.”

  “Which ought to make it easier finding out which hotel he was staying at. We’ll do a ring-round, starting at the top and working downwards. My guess is he was at one of the five-star jobs, the plush ones.”

  “You think we should begin that now?”

  Johansen’s tone implied he was hoping the answer was no. He looked tired. Parry was tired, and stifled a yawn as he said, “Leaving it a few hours won’t hurt. Let’s call it a night and start again tomorrow, bright and early. Well, early anyway.”

  Johansen gave Parry a lift home in the launch. Before clambering into bed, Parry played Anna’s message one more time. Her words, a small spark of hope, were something to curl around beneath the covers and nurture snugly, smugly, as he sank into sleep.

  9. Suite

  ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER hotel room.

  Parry’s guess had been on the mark. Daryl Henderson had been a resident of the Top A (strictly speaking still was, since he had yet to check out officially). The hotel, one of New Venice’s most expansive and expensive, was situated on the perimeter of the Hub Lagoon, and Henderson’s fifteenth-floor suite had an enviable view not only of that octagonal expanse of azure water but also of five of the city’s main radial canals, thinning into the distance. Midmorning heat made the world outside the suite’s windows waver and shimmer, but inside the three large interconnecting rooms, with their decor of marble and glass and silk and pine, all was glacially cool.

  In the drawer of Henderson’s bedside table Parry found nothing except the obligatory copy of the Gideons Bible. The closets held Henderson’s clothes, laundered and folded or hung. His shoes were arranged in racked rows, the leather pairs professionally polished and gleaming like the carapaces of beetles. The bed was made, plump as an iced bun, one corner of the covers turned back, a foil-wrapped chocolate on the pillow. The suite was ready for the return of its paying occupant. He, of course, would not be coming back, and again, in this room where Henderson had lived, Parry got the same impression as in the room at the Amadeus where Henderson had died – that sense of people passing through and leaving nothing behind, not even a memory of themselves.

  Questioning of the chambermaid responsible for this floor revealed no evidence that Henderson had been in a disturbed or unstable frame of mind before departing for Sirensong on the previous evening but one. The woman, an Algerian, told Parry in halting, French-accented English that she remembered Henderson passing her in the corridor on his way out that evening and wishing her goodnight. As far as she could recall, there had been nothing out of the ordinary about his appearance or manner. He had left the suite in no untidier a state than usual, and she had definitely not found any kind of note. A resident of the Top A for several months now, Henderson had always had a smile and a greeting for her. A good-looking boy, she said. Not the sort you would want your daughter to marry. A Siren, if you please! But still, a nice young man.

  From the hotel manager Parry learned that Henderson was in credit for his accommodation until the end of the month. That was why none of the hotel staff had been concerned about his absence from his suite for the past two nights. Naturally, as long as the room was paid for, a guest was free to stay there or not stay there as he or she wished.

  Parry prevailed upon the manager to show him the contents of the safety deposit box for Henderson’s room. In the box were a passport card, a cloth-wrapped Foreign statuette approximately twenty centimetres high, and several small velvet bags full of glittering, uncut jewels. Parry took the passport card and, without much difficulty, persuaded the manager to keep custody of the valuables until Henderson’s next of kin had been contacted. The precious stones and statuette could then be sent to them.

  Leaving the Top A, Parry made his way back to FPP Headquarters on foot. In the course of the ten-minute journey he traversed two bridges and three plazas, and all the while he brooded on the conundrum facing him.

  The more he was discovering about Daryl Henderson, the less simple the case was becoming (not that it had been simple to start with). Henderson’s actions prior to his death were uncharacteristic of a suicidal person. The Scottish castrato, Dillon, had described him as “normal” when they had last met; the chambermaid had noticed no change in his customary friendliness towards her. Henderson was prospering from singing, as most graduates of the Conservatorio did. He was not in arrears with his hotel bill – the opposite, in fact. Nor did he appear to be the kind of person who made enemies, at least not easily. Although that was not to say that someone might not have targeted him for murder. Someone jealous of his looks, perhaps? His success? Someone like a fellow Siren?

  Increasingly murder was looking like a less feasible explanation for the deaths. Parry knew that when you have a murder you have to look for a motive, and the motive in this instance was elusive to the point of imperceptibility. If someone wanted to kill Henderson, why had the Foreigner had to die too? Because it was a witness to the deed? But how would it possibly have been able to testify against the killer? And if this someone harboured a grudge against both the Foreigner and Henderson – again, why? What could the two of them together have done to offend? Might Henderson have hooked a Foreigner that another Siren considered belonged exclusively to him? It was hardly a murder-worthy transgression.

  And that, there, was the crux of the matter. What, in this day and age, was a murder-worthy transgression? If the statistics were anything to go by, almost nothing. Since the Debut, the world had seen a spectacular drop in homicide figures. Where once the annual toll in a major metropolis might have been in the hundreds, now it was in single figures. In New Venice itself, there had not been a murder in nine years. Nine years! Sometimes even Parry found this hard to believe, yet if anything typified the post-Foreign era it was the rarity of crime, both petty and serious. People were more even-tempered nowadays, and less avaricious. A dispute that once might have been settled with violence was now settled amicably, or more likely would not arise at all. Consequently, the worst violent crime of all, murder, had become the almost exclusive province of zealots and the clinically insane. And what had happened in Room 1114 did not look like the handiwork of either.

  For all these reasons Parry was inclining away from murder as an explanation for the deaths and looking favourably on Hosokawa’s shinju theory. Perhaps Henderson had been singing to one particular golden giant on a regular basis for some time. Although the Foreigner had checked into the Amadeus on the same night on which it and Henderson had died, that did not mean the two of them had not been companions for a while. Foreigners were known to chop and change between hotels. They were peripatetic creatures. Like all good tourists, they liked to keep moving.

  So, pursuing this idea: Henderson and the Foreigner had grown close, and had come to the decision that the gulf between their races, which normally only hand-symbols and singing could bridge, could be fully and permanently elided if they were both to die. Their final night together, then, had been their mutual swan-song. Henderson had purchased the gun, brought it along with him to the Amadeus, given the vocal performance of his life, then shot himself while, simultaneously, the Foreigner had ended its existence by whatever method Foreigners did such a thing. And the wa
ke-up call? Just making sure that they would be found.

  This explanation was more straightforward than murder and had fewer ramifications. It meant that no third party was involved; no one was targeting Sirens and Foreigners; there was no killer stalking New Venice. Foreign Policy was better designed to deal with a tragic but self-contained event such as suicide than it was to deal with a murder investigation. Which, in itself, was no reason to favour the shinju theory over any other. But the theory did seem to fit the facts as well as, if not better than, any other.

  By the time he emerged onto the acacia-fringed Piazza di Verdi, Parry’s head was beginning to ache, both from the heat of the sun drumming down on his pate and from the effort of trying to make sense of so much contradictory and inconclusive information. There were too many variables, that was the problem. Too many unknown factors. He was trying to solve a mystery of which one vital component was an insoluble mystery: the lost Foreigner. Without the Foreigner, the case would have been far more straightforward. But then that was false logic. Without the Foreigner there would not have been a case, as such, at all.

  FPP HQ was situated on the piazza’s north side. It was Parry’s not entirely unserious belief that New Venice’s architects must have dreamed the building up on a Friday afternoon. How else to explain the crenellations that crowned its eight-storey bulk, or the profusion of asymmetrically-positioned windows, or the central spired turret, or the finials and baroque curlicues and other odd protuberances of masonry? The architecture had about it that end-of-the-working-week feeling, an air of unconstrained ideas and devil-may-care expectation. Even the entrance seemed intended to raise a smile, resembling as it did the fascia of an old Art Deco wireless set, with, where the speaker grilles would have been, tall panes of glass inset with doors. FPP HQ was a building designed to welcome rather than impose. It was also a building without any locks, inside or out, other than the bolts on the doors to its toilet cubicles. It was, in short, accessible in every way.

  Parry bee-lined towards it across the piazza, jogged up the sugar-cube front steps, and entered the enclosed chill of the airy white atrium. Offering a SALUTATION to the officer on duty at the horseshoe-shaped front desk, he crossed to the lifts and was soon ascending from Floor Lower C to Floor F. In his office, he activated his work board. No sooner had the screen illuminated itself than the computer emitted the orchestral phrase – predictably, the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Fifth – that signified an urgent message waiting. Parry hit Play and heard Quesnel’s voice.

  “Jack. I got word you may have identified the dead Siren. Come up and see me as soon as you get in.”

  This morning the commissioner was not alone. Entering her office, Parry was dismayed (though somehow not surprised) to find van Wyk with her. Seated in the swivel-chair that he himself had occupied the previous day, the Afrikaner was looking as contented as a cream-fed cat. His hands were laced in his lap and there was a smile on his face that said that he felt right at home here and that it would be only a matter of time before his backside was resting just as comfortably in the chair on the other side of the desk.

  “Ma’am,” Parry said to her, with a SALUTATION. “Captain van Wyk.”

  “Jack, thanks for coming. Pull up a seat.” Quesnel indicated a plain steel chair in the corner of the room. Parry fetched it, positioned it the same distance from the desk as van Wyk’s plusher perch, and lowered himself onto it, trying not to feel as though the inferior chair represented some sort of demotion.

  “Ray’s asked if he can sit in and hear what you’ve found out,” Quesnel said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Of course I bloody mind.

  “Fine by me,” Parry said with a shrug.

  “So, what have you found out? Who was this Siren?”

  Parry took out Henderson’s passport card and handed it to her across the desk. “A twenty-four-year-old Australian, name of Daryl Henderson. Conservatorio-trained. Making a very tidy living for himself.”

  “Till his brains got blown out,” muttered van Wyk.

  Quesnel scrutinised the picture on the passport card. “It’s a shame. Waste of a good-looking young guy. So, what else do we know about him?”

  Parry had run some checks before heading out to the Top A. “He’s not on the Siren register, he has no criminal record, and he has family in Melbourne. I haven’t yet notified them about his death.”

  “Leave that to me,” said Quesnel.

  Parry signed GRATITUDE.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m beginning to develop a theory as to what might have happened. It’s extremely tentative as yet.”

  “Give it to us anyway.”

  Parry shot a sidelong glance at van Wyk. His fellow captain had one pale eyebrow raised.

  “As a matter of fact, I can’t claim full credit for this,” he said. “One of my junior officers, Yoshi Hosokawa, suggested it to me.”

  Nice one, Jack. In case they laugh, make sure there’s someone else to shift the blame onto.

  “Officer Hosokawa pointed out that the situation in the room at the Amadeus resembles what’s known in his native country as a shinju. It’s a kind of shared suicide. A lovers’ death pact. Two individuals find themselves so in love, and the course of their love so full of obstacles, that the only way out they can see is to kill themselves.”

  He looked at Quesnel. She was nodding. He looked at van Wyk. The eyebrow remained aloft.

  “And that,” he said, “could be what Henderson and the Foreigner did the night before last.”

  Quesnel hmm’ed for a moment. Then: “How would a Siren and a Foreigner communicate such an idea to each other? Not through hand-symbols, surely. I can’t think how they would manage it that way.”

  “Through singing?” Parry ventured.

  He heard van Wyk snort.

  “It’s not inconceivable. If a melody – a certain set of notes expressed in a certain way – can carry a specific emotional resonance, then why not? Why couldn’t a Siren use his voice to convey a desire or an intention to a Foreigner? All the Foreigner would have to do in return is sign ACCEPTANCE or REGRET, depending on how it felt.”

  “Yes, well, I guess it is possible,” Quesnel said. “I certainly don’t have any more of a problem with that idea than I do with the idea of Sirens and Foreigners falling in love. I mean, I know it’s happened, but...”

  “Precisely,” said Parry. “It has happened. And a shared suicide logically represents one possible outcome of that. Not a desirable one by any means, but a possible one.”

  “So let me get this right, Parry,” van Wyk said. “You’re claiming it was some kind of folie à deux?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “Forgive me, but isn’t that just a little, well, farfetched?”

  “It does demand a slight stretch of the imagination.”

  “A leap of the imagination, I’d say. Céleste, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn here, but I mean, really, if this shogun theory is the best explanation that Captain Parry can –”

  “Shinju.” Parry articulated the word with condescending exactness.

  “Of course. I beg your pardon. Let me make a mental note of that. Shinju. If this shinju theory is the best explanation he can come up with, surely it’s time someone else should be appointed to help him. Someone who can bring a fresh perspective to the matter.”

  “And what fresh perspective might this ‘someone’ bring, Ray?” Quesnel enquired.

  “He wouldn’t waste time following up the suicide angle, for one thing. It’s quite obvious that we’re looking at homicide here. Homicide dressed up as suicide in order to throw us off the scent.”

  “Captain van Wyk, with the greatest respect,” Parry said, “I have not discounted the possibility of this being homicide, not to mention Xenocide. If, however, you had considered the case as carefully as I have over the past twenty-four hours, and if you bear in mind how rare an occurrence murder actually is, you’ll realise that the shinju theor
y comes out, on balance, as the likelier explanation.”

  “A lot depends,” Quesnel interposed, “on whether or not something similar happens again.”

  “I agree,” said Parry.

  Van Wyk gave a very good impression of someone looking aghast. “You mean to say you think there is a chance this might be murder but you’re going to wait and see if it happens again before you commit yourself? A bizarre tactic.”

  “I’m not saying I want there to be another of these things. Of course I don’t.”

  “Then it’s up to you to ensure that there isn’t another one.”

  “Thank you for that sterling piece of advice. I’d never have thought of that myself.”

  “Jack...” admonished Quesnel.

  Parry manufolded APOLOGY. “Forgive me, ma’am. Captain van Wyk is of course correct. Unfortunately, as we’re all aware, the way things stand our options are somewhat limited. We could, I suppose, interview as many Sirens as possible, establish which of them, if any, have formed personal attachments with Foreigners, and then monitor those Sirens closely.”

  “But?”

  “But that would not only entail the co-operation of the Siren community as a whole, which we’re unlikely to get, but it would require a massive mobilisation of FPP personnel and resources and may, perhaps, clue Sirens in on the fact that something’s up and send them running. More to the point, any kind of monitoring is expressly forbidden under Measure Three of the Constitution. We cannot perform surveillance on individuals or groups of individuals. It would be a gross infringement of their personal rights.”