Alex and I arrived at the station close to nine the next morning, clutching three coffees from Rise & Grinder.
Sten did not look impressed when we went to him for our spyware, and I realised that my lips were probably swollen. I wondered if it was possible for our score to be lowered because we'd had sex before work. Surely not? It should have demonstrated good partnership -- of a kind...
Once we were wearing our equipment, we went to our office, where Cassia would soon be meeting us to go over the post-mortem in more detail. As we settled down at our desks, I looked at my coffee forlornly.
"What's wrong?" Alex asked.
"I still can't believe Merrick didn't have any chocolate muffins today. I've been getting used to having them. Now I feel chocolate-deprived."
Alex smiled. "You had chocolate cake at The Diamond last night."
"That was yesterday. This is today!"
"Fine. I suppose I've got just enough time to fetch you a chocolate bar from the cafeteria before Cassia comes." He stood up.
I brightened. "What, really? Thanks!"
"Anything to keep you happy," he teased.
Cassia arrived a minute after he'd left, bearing a box filled with papers and a tired expression. I stood up and took the box away, replacing it with the third coffee. She seemed too dazed to stop me.
"Morning," I said. "What's all this?"
"The papers that we found with Frankie Jarsdel." Cassia hugged the coffee cup. "I asked Laney for them because I thought you'd want to have another look now. Where's Alex?"
"Fetching me chocolate, so you'll have to hold fire on your explanation for a few minutes. Why don't we catch up instead?" I perched on the edge of my desk and tried to look nonchalant.
Cassia's eyes narrowed. "Catch up? We could have done that last night at Mom and Dad's, but you were out with Alex's family instead."
"Jealous?"
"No!" Her tone was ridiculously defensive, and she blushed. "I just missed you."
I shrugged and feigned extreme interest in my coffee. "Okay."
There was a long silence.
"That's it?" she asked quietly.
"If I ask you questions, I know you won't answer them. So Sebastian and I will just have to watch over you instead."
"Sebastian?"
I turned back to her. "Yes. We're both really worried about you, Cassia."
Longing nestled in her gaze before she lowered it to the floor. She leaned against the desk beside me and sighed. "Miles and I are getting divorced."
I nearly dropped my coffee. "What? Oh, God, Cassia --"
"He says he's in love with someone else."
Shock gave way to anger. "Bastard! I'm going to punch him."
Cassia looked up. "It's okay. It's still sinking in, but I'm sort of relieved. It's been a long time coming. The old Miles left ages ago."
I put my coffee down and drew her into a hug. "Right...well, if you ever need a place to stay while you're sorting this out, you know you can come to me. Or if you just want to talk, I'm always here. Okay?"
"Yeah." She rested her chin on my shoulder. "I'm sorry I've been avoiding the topic. I'm just...not good at sharing. And I felt ashamed that I couldn't be a good enough wife."
"It's got nothing to do with you," I said fiercely. "You were trying your hardest to fix things while he was tearing them to pieces."
Over her shoulder, I saw Alex approaching our glass office. He slowed down as his gaze landed on us, then stopped in the middle of the corridor as if he didn't know whether he was allowed in. I shot him an encouraging smile and pulled away from Cassia. He pushed the door open.
"Hi, Alex," I said. "Did you get the chocolate?"
He strode over and gave me two bars. "Here you are."
"You know the way to a woman's heart."
"Your heart, you mean." He smiled and glanced at Cassia. "Good morning."
"Good morning." Her tone was professional. "Let's talk about Frankie."
Alex picked up his coffee, and I ripped open a chocolate bar. Then I nodded at my sister.
"I'll take you through my estimated sequence of events," she said. "At the very beginning of her attack, Frankie was drugged with alprazolam -- also known as Xanax. She was then suffocated using a pillowcase. The attacker held her face-down with their hand like this..." She put one hand on the back of my neck, her fingers splayed.
"But she died of a heart attack?" Alex asked.
"Cardiac arrest," Cassia corrected. "Caused by the asphyxiation. Once the murderer realised she was dead, they must have carried her to the lift and dropped her down the shaft, breaking her neck."
"And threw the folder and all its papers down there," I finished.
Alex dragged the box closer. "We should try putting them in order."
So we lifted the pages out one by one, each of them still contained within their own bag. The equations all looked identical to me, and there were no page markings. In fact, nothing but the occasional title of FFI indicated what they really were.
Once our desks were heaving with paper, we stood back to survey the mess we needed to sort. I folded my arms across my chest. "This isn't going to work."
We tried anyway. I looked through the pages we'd dumped on my desk, Cassia helping me. She examined each with a knowledgeable light in her eyes. I stared at them blankly, stared a bit more, and sighed. Then I moved on to the next one.
After five minutes of near silence, Cassia cleared her throat. "This is weird."
Alex came over from his desk, and I looked up. Cassia turned her paper around for us to see. "It's written in two distinct, separate hands. And the equations are all different."
I took it off her and compared it to what I was holding. "Aren't all the equations a little different? Lonn wouldn't sit and write the same ones over and over, would he?"
She rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant. The chemicals are all different -- they're not anything Lonn had recorded experimenting with before." She took the paper back and skimmed over it again. "I think one of them is used in cancer drugs, actually. Cancer cures."
I frowned. "Cancer cures? Are you sure?"
Cassia studied it a moment longer. "As sure as I can be. But maybe if you asked someone at Lab S, they would understand."
I exchanged a look of comprehension with Alex.
"Like Nora," he said. "But she said she was in remission."
I frowned and turned away. That was right. So why...?
No. No, it wasn't right.
"Sorry, I only picked up my missed calls this morning. I had an appointment at the hospital... I don't need chemo anymore."
"She didn't say that she's in remission." I turned back. "She said that she doesn't need chemo anymore, and we assumed it was for good reasons. But what if they've just stopped it because it's not working?"
Alex and Cassia exchanged an uncertain look.
"Let's say there wasn't much hope in the first place," I continued. "She's close with Lonn. He started working on a cure for her. Maybe he even worked with her. When the arrangement crumbled, she murdered him and took the work."
Cassia frowned. "What about the rest of these papers?"
"Fake." I took the one true paper off her again and strode towards the door. "Thanks for having coffee with us, but I need to find Nora. Now."
***
"I feel like I'm missing a few puzzle pieces," Alex said as we left the station. "Cassia...?"
"And Miles are divorcing." I took his hand and upped our pace to a jog. Well, my pace to a jog. "We need to hurry for the next tram."
One rushed down the middle of the road and slowed to a stop ahead of us. I tugged Alex into a proper run, and we weaved around the pedestrians with muttered apologies. We stepped on board just before the doors closed and sat down among late students and straggling nine-to-fivers.
"Will she be okay?" Alex asked.
"I don't know. I hope so."
"Me, too. And now I have another question -- aren't heart attacks and cardiac arrests the same?"
"No. A heart attack is when an artery is blocked, meaning oxygen-rich blood can't reach the heart. It's usually what people mean when they use the terms heart attack and cardiac arrest interchangeably. But a cardiac arrest is different: it's when the heart stops beating unexpectedly. It's an electrical problem."
"I'm surprised you're knowledgeable about it, then."
I rolled my eyes. "Hilarious."
"You said you were good at GCSE Biology." He frowned. "Did you ever want to be a doctor or a pathologist, like Cassia?"
"I never knew what I wanted to be. I just fell into this job and never got back out."
"Do you want to get out?"
I raised an eyebrow and tapped the metal bracelet around my wrist. "It would be a bit late now. But, no, I like this job. Especially when I'm working with you."
He leaned closer so that his forehead was touching mine. "Good."
We stayed like that, huddled close together, until the tram halted outside Socrico University. But when we stood up, my playful mood evaporated. Nora Fitzroy had a lot to answer for.
We walked to Socrico University Research, then jogged up the stairs to the first floor. Our shoes made a racket against the metal, and by the time we reached the top, Riannon Sotello was standing in the doorway to Lab S. "For God's sake! Don't you think this is nearing, like, harassment? What do you want this time?"
"Nora," I said. "Where is she?"
"In a meeting." Riannon tilted her head like a sadistically curious kitten, sending the silver hoops in her ears swinging. "What do you want her for?"
"A little talk."
She hesitated. "I suppose you'd like to wait in here."
"Yes. We'll stay out of the way."
She slowly stepped back, and we brushed past her, marching straight to Lonn's office. Riannon followed us and stood on the other side of the electro-tape.
The PRBs had finished analysing it now, but the central desk was still covered in paper, the workbenches were still cluttered with beakers and pipettes, and the upturned table was still on the floor. Everything was frozen in the moment of Lonn Temple's murder.
Alex strolled to the shelves where the folders were kept and looked at the gap remaining. "Riannon, did Lonn have exactly three folders of every colour?"
"Yes."
"He wouldn't have had four purple folders and just two blue?"
"No."
I joined my sergeant and saw what he meant. "One blue folder is missing. Ours is purple. I was right -- it was all fake. Apart from the real note that accidentally fell into the mess."
I'd given that real note to Alex, and now he slipped it out of his jacket pocket. We stared at it again.
"What do you mean?" Riannon asked.
"When Lonn stopped frequenting The Black Horse," I said to Alex, "he was spending his time here. But it wasn't a cure for fatal familial insomnia that he was spending the extra hours on."
"What?" Riannon exclaimed.
"Do you think this was his way of finding redemption after Paris?" Alex asked. "Trying to save another person's life?"
"We'll probably never know."
"Inspector?" Nora said.
We both turned around.
She'd edged Riannon out of the doorway and was now standing there in a tailored suit, carrying a pile of papers. As we watched, she ducked under the electro-tape, ignoring the squawk of the PRB on guard.
"What are you doing here again?" she asked. "I know this is your job, but you've turned up three times in the past two days. You're starting to make my staff feel nervous."
"We're investigating," I said crisply.
Alex held up the zip-locked paper. "Do you recognise this?"
She froze. Then her arms slackened, and her papers cascaded to the ground.
I pounced on the nearest and brought it back to Alex. The handwriting looked like a match.
"Nora Fitzroy," I said, "I am arresting you on the suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
***
Nora came to the station quietly, with the air of someone who knew that everything was over. Alex and I collected some final pieces of evidence for our interview, then went back down to the custody suite to explain it to her solicitor.
Eventually, we were ready to talk with Nora. Yesterday, I'd believed we were a long way from identifying the murderer. Today, as I took my seat in the interview room, I found that the culprit was right in front of me.
"This interview is being video-recorded," I said, "and may be given in evidence if your case is brought to trial. We are in an interview room at Socrico Police Station on 6th June 2186. The time is 10:00. I am Detective Inspector Amber Rames. The other police officer present is Detective Sergeant Alex Sullivan. Please state your full name and date of birth."
"Nora Fitzroy," she murmured. "7th August 2148."
"Also present is Nora's solicitor. Nora, I will remind you that you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."
"I understand."
"We found a pile of papers with Frankie Jarsdel's body yesterday. Almost all of them are written entirely in your handwriting and are labelled as work towards a fatal familial insomnia cure. I imagine that when we get an expert to look at them, we'll find it's a load of waffle."
Nora shifted in her seat, and her short hair fell over her eyes.
"One piece of paper contains your handwriting and Lonn's. And these notes work towards an entirely different cure."
Taking his cue, Alex slid the paper across the table so that Nora could see it.
"I've just had a chat with an oncologist at Socrico Hospital," I said. "These equations include an existing drug that is used to fight breast cancer. You suffer from breast cancer, Nora. Do you want to tell me about that?"
She kept her eyes down.
"Okay, I'll tell you, then. Because the other thing I did was gain access to your medical records." I leaned forward. "You've chosen to stop the chemotherapy because it isn't working. Nothing is working. Not even twenty-second century drugs can cure your advanced disease. You have stage four breast cancer, Nora, and you're dying."
The solicitor frowned and opened her mouth to warn me off, but Nora raised her head. "I am."
"Where has it spread?"
"My brain." Her voice was just a whisper, but it brought an iron weight down on the room.
"You tried to make a treatment of your own with Lonn Temple," Alex said. "Illegally."
Nora's gaze hardened. "On average, it takes fifteen years to legally get a drug from the bench to the bedside. I don't have that time."
I folded my arms. "I assume you were the sole participant in all of your drug's trials?"
"Yes."
"And how was that going?" Alex asked.
Her lips thinned, and she looked away.
"It wasn't working," I said. "Lonn wasn't happy about that. But you wanted to keep on trying."
"It's my life on the line!" Her eyes watered. "If the drug went wrong, maybe I'd die. But if I don't do anything, I'll die anyway!"
"Where is the rest of the drug?"
"Gone. Lonn refused to make any more when I started experiencing side effects, and he refused to try changing the formula. He was getting shifty about what would happen to him if I died and it was proved that the drugs had killed me. But I made the discoveries that allowed us to try this -- it was my project!" Her voice turned to steel. "And I knew that I could do it."
"So when he told you that you had to stop," I said, "you killed him and took the notes."
Her breathing hitched. "No. I wasn't there on the night he was murdered. You have my alibi!"
"Your husband left you alone in the flat from quarter past eight until the early hours of the morning. Lonn was killed between seven and nine."
"I was at the flat."
"Digitally, you were at Lab S," I said. "You remained clocked-in there all night."
"I didn't kill him. I wasn't at the lab with him on Thursday night!"
"What about Frankie? You claimed that you were at your flat -- a stone's throw away from the crime scene -- when she was murdered."
Nora swallowed. "I was."
"Would you like to explain to us why fake notes written by your hand were found with her body?"
"No."
I stood up. "I'll let you rethink that answer. I'm going to find your husband and ask him exactly when you stayed late at the lab."
I was going to get the evidence we needed to close this case, once and for all.