“He left his home at about seven o’clock, on his way to a children’s party in Wembley. He was supposed to give away the prizes. He never arrived there. Two teenagers say they saw him at about seven-thirty in Hyde Park with a woman.”
Fallada said: “And this girl was killed by him about eight hours later, in Putney?”
“Looks like it, sir. Suppose he had some kind of brainstorm. Probably lost his memory and wandered around for hours. . .”
Fallada asked Carlsen: “What time did your space vampire escape from the S.R.I. building?”
“About seven, I suppose. You think –”
Fallada raised his hand. “I’ll tell you what I think when we’ve examined the body.” He told Grey: “I want to show Commander Carlsen how we test for negative life energy. So could you set up the apparatus on the man over there?”
Dixon said: “I’ll leave you now, sir. The Commissioner says he’ll be in his office until seven o’clock.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll tell him the result.” The body of the dead man was still lying on the trolley near the door, now covered with a sheet. Carlsen guided the other end of the stretcher as they wheeled it to the other end of the laboratory.
Grey said: “In through that door.”
It was a small room that contained only one bench. Suspended above this was a machine that reminded Carlsen of an X-ray apparatus. Carlsen helped the assistant transfer the body to the bench. Grey pulled off the sheet and dropped it onto the trolley. The man’s flesh was yellow and rubbery. The line made by the rope was clearly visible in the flesh of his neck. One eye was half open; Grey closed it perfunctorily.
Attached to the wall behind the bench was a large L-field meter, the scale calibrated in millionths of an amp. Next to this was a television monitor. Grey attached one lead to the man’s chin, clamping the other to the loose flesh of his thigh. The needle on the meter swung over. Grey said: “Point nought four. And he’s been dead for nearly forty-eight hours.”
Fallada came in. He looked at the reading, then said to Carlsen: “You see, this man also died by violence.”
“Yes, but by his own hand. That’s not like being beaten and strangled.”
“Perhaps. Now what we are going to do is to induce an artificial life field with this Bentz apparatus. Watch.” He pressed a switch; a faint blue light glowed down from the apparatus above the corpse, accompanied by a rising sound that soon passed beyond the range of audibility. After about a minute, the needle of the lambda meter began to climb steadily. Seven minutes later, it had climbed to 10.3, slightly lower than that of a living body. The needle wavered there. Fallada said: “I think that’s as high as it will go.” He snapped off the switch, and the light slowly died. Fallada indicated the meter. “Now it should take about twelve hours before the life field leaks away. And that is in spite of the decomposition that must have started in his intestines.”
Grey undipped the leads. This time, Fallada helped him to transfer the body back onto the trolley. Grey wheeled it out. A moment later, he returned with the body of the girl. He removed the sheet and they lifted it onto the bench. She was wearing a tweed skirt under the nylon smock. A pair of tights hung loosely around one foot.
Carlsen asked: “Who was she?”
“A waitress from an all-night transport café. She lived only a few hundred yards from her work.”
Without ceremony Grey pulled up the skirt. Underneath, the girl was naked. Carlsen observed the bruises and scratches on her thighs. Grey clipped one electrode to the soft flesh inside her thigh, and the other to her lower lip. Fallada leaned forward. Suddenly, Carlsen was aware of his tension. The needle of the meter climbed slowly and stopped at .002. Grey said: “It’s dropped two thousand milli-amps in seven hours.”
Fallada reached out and pressed the switch; the blue light came on. When the hum faded, there was absolute silence. As slowly as the minute hand of a watch, the needle climbed to 8.3. After another minute, it was clear that it would stay there. Fallada said: “Now,” and switched off the machine. Almost immediately, the needle of the lambda meter began to drop. Fallada and Grey looked at one another, Carlsen noticed that Grey was sweating.
Fallada turned to Carlsen. He said quietly: “You understand?”
“Not quite.”
“It will take only about ten minutes for her artifical life field to disappear. She cannot hold a life field.”
Grey was watching the needle. He said: “I’ve seen ruptured life fields before, but never anything as bad as this.”
Carlsen said: “But what does it mean?”
Fallada cleared his throat. He said: “It means that whoever killed her sucked the life out of her so violently that it destroyed her capacity to hold a life field. You could compare her to a tire with a thousand punctures, so that it can no longer hold air.”
Carlsen found he had to overcome a strong inner resistance to ask his next question. “Are you sure there’s no other way it could have happened?”
Fallada said sombrely: “I know of none.”
There was a silence. Grey said: “What happens now?”
Fallada said: “Now, I think, the hunt begins all over again.” He laid a hand on Carlsen’s elbow. “Let us go back to my office.”
Grey asked: “What do you want me to do?”
“Continue the tests. I would like to know whether the pressure on her throat was enough to kill her.”
Back in the office, Carlsen took up his half-finished drink. Fallada dropped into the chair behind bis desk. He pressed the switch of the telescreen. A girl’s voice said: “Yes, sir?”
“Get me Sir Percy Heseltine at Scotland Yard.”
He turned to Carlsen. “This is what I expected. I must admit to feeling a certain grim satisfaction to know that I am right.”
“But are you sure you’re right? Look, I saw what happened to young Adams. She drained all the life out of him, and he turned into an old man. Did you see the body?” Fallada nodded. “Now, this girl doesn’t look in the least like that. She looks to me like the victim of an ordinary sex attack. Surely there could be some other explanation for this ruptured life field?”
Fallada shook his head. “No. You do not understand. To begin with, it is not a question of a ruptured life field. What is ruptured is whatever holds the life field. No one knows exactly what that is — I even know biologists who think that man has a nonmaterial body as well as a physical body, and that the life field is a function of the atoms of this body — as magnetism is a function of the atoms of a magnet. Think of the flesh of an orange. The juice is held in tiny cells –”
The telescreen buzzed. He said: “Hello?”
The secretary said: “I’m afraid the Commissioner isn’t in at present, sir. He’s in Wandsworth. He should be back in about half an hour.”
“Very well. Tell his secretary that I’ll be coming over there in half an hour. Say it’s urgent.” He rang off. “Now, where was I?”
“An orange.”
“Ah, yes. I was saying that if you allowed an orange to dry out, and then left it to soak in water for a day, it would regain its old shape, would it not? But if you crushed the juice out of the orange in a vice, nothing could make it return to its old shape. All the cells would be ruptured. It is the same with a living body. If it dies normally, the life field takes several days to disperse. Even if death is due to violence, it still takes a fairly long time, because most of the cells remain intact. The body is like an orange with a bad bruise, but dehydration still takes a few days. Now, that girl’s cell structure had been destroyed like the orange in the vice. And there is no normal way in which this could happen. Unless she was burned to a cinder, or fell from the top of this building.” He paused to empty his glass. “Or was cut into pieces by a train.”
“But would a train have destroyed the structure?”
“No, I was joking. But it would have made sure that no one bothered to take a lambda reading.” He crossed to the cupboard. “Would you like another drink? It is early, but I think I deserve it.” Carlsen emptied his glass and held it out. For several moments, neither of them spoke. Carlsen observed that although he had drunk two whiskies, he still felt cold sober, without even a glow of exhilaration.