Eventually the car turned into the plantation through a wide gated entrance with a white stone arch. Cherry trees lined the long driveway, leading up to a low white house with a bright red clay tile roof.

“All very traditional,” Paula commented.

Hoshe glanced out at the arch. “You’ll find that a lot on this world. We do tend to idolize the past. Most of us had settler ancestors who were successful even before they arrived, and the ethos lingers on. As a planet, we’ve done rather well from it.”

“If it works, don’t try and fix it.”

“Yeah.” He showed no sign that he’d picked up on any irony.

The car halted on the gravel in front of the house’s main door. Paula climbed out, looking around the large formal gardens. A lot of time and effort had gone into the big lawn with its palisade of trees.

Tara Jennifer Shaheef was standing in front of the double acmwood doors underneath the portico. Her husband, Matthew deSavoel, stood beside her, an arm resting protectively around her shoulders. He was older than she by a couple of decades, Paula noticed; thick dark hair turning to silver, his midriff starting to spread.

The car drove off around to the stable block. Paula walked forward. “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” she said.

“That’s all right,” Tara said with a nervous smile. She nodded tightly at Detective Finn. “Hello again.”

“I trust this won’t be too upsetting,” Matthew deSavoel said. “My wife had put her re-life ordeal behind her.”

“It’s all right, Matthew,” Tara said, patting him.

“I won’t deliberately make this difficult,” Paula said. “It was your wife’s family who wanted this investigation kept open.”

Matthew deSavoel grunted in dissatisfaction and opened the front door. “I feel like we should have a lawyer present,” he said as he walked them through the cool reception hall.

“That is your prerogative,” Paula said neutrally. If deSavoel thought his wife was fully recovered he was fooling himself badly. Nobody with three lifetimes behind them was as twitchy as Tara seemed to be. In Paula’s experience, anyone who had been killed, accidentally or otherwise, took at least one regeneration post re-life to get over the psychological trauma.

They were shown into a large lounge with a stone tile floor; a grand fireplace dominated one wall, with a real grate and logs sitting at the center of it. The walls had various hunting trophies hanging up, along with the stuffed heads of alien animals, their teeth and claws prominently displayed to portray them as savage monsters.

“Yours?” Hoshe asked.

“I bagged every one of them,” Matthew deSavoel said proudly. “There’s a lot of hostile wildlife still living up in the hills.”

“I’ve never seen a gorall that big before,” Hoshe said, standing underneath one of the heads.

“I wasn’t aware Oaktier had a guns and hunting culture,” Paula said.

“They don’t in the cities,” deSavoel said. “They think those of us who tend the land are barbaric savages who do it purely for sport. None of them live out here; none of them realize what sort of danger the goralls and vidies pose if they get down to the human communities. There are several political campaigns to ban landowners from shooting outside cultivated lands, as if the goralls will respect that. It’s exactly the kind of oppressive crap I came here to get away from.”

“So guns are quite easy to get hold of on this planet?”

“Not a bit of it,” Tara said. She made a big show of flopping into one of the broad couches. “You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to get a license, even for a hunting rifle.”

Paula sat opposite her. “Did you ever hold a license?”

“No.” Tara shook her head, smiling softly at some private joke. She took a cigarette out of her case, and pressed it on the lighting pad at the bottom. It gave off the sweet mint smell of high-quality GM majane. “Do you mind? It helps me relax.”

Hoshe Finn frowned, but didn’t say anything.

“Did you ever possess a gun?” Paula asked.

Tara laughed. “No. Or if I did, I never kept the memory. I don’t think I would, though. Guns have no place in a civilized society.”

“Most commendable,” Paula said. She wondered if Tara was really that unsophisticated, or if that was something she wanted to believe post-death. But then, most citizens chose to overlook how easy it was to get hold of a weapon. “I’d like to talk about Wyobie Cotal.”

“Certainly. But like I told Detective Finn last time, I only have a couple of weeks’ memory of him.”

“You were having an affair with him?”

Tara took a deep drag, exhaling slowly. “Certainly was. God, what a body that kid had. I don’t think I’d ever forget that.”

“So your marriage to Morton was over?”

“No, not really. We were still on good terms, though it was getting a bit stale. You must know what that’s like.” There was an edge of mockery in her voice.

“Did you have other affairs?”

“A couple. Like I said, I could see where it was heading with Morton. Our company was doing well, it was taking up more and more of his time. Men are like that, always obsessing about the wrong things in life. Some men.” She extended a languid hand to deSavoel, who kissed her knuckles indulgently.

“Did Morton know about the other men?”

“Probably. But I respected him, I didn’t flaunt them, they were never the cause of any argument.”

“Did Morton have a gun?”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. We had a good marriage.”

“It was coming to an end.”

“And we got divorced. It happens. In fact, it has to happen when you live this long.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“No.”

“All right. Why would you choose Tampico?”

“That’s the place I filed the divorce from, isn’t it? Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. The first time I heard about it was right after my re-life when the insurance investigators were asking me what happened. I never even knew the place existed before.”

“You and Cotal bought tickets there. You left with him four days after your last memory dump in the Kirova Clinic’s secure store. Why did you run off with him?”

“I don’t know. I remember meeting him, it was at a party, then after that it was just for the sex, really; and he was fun, enthusiastic the way only first-lifers can be. I enjoyed him, but I always found it hard to believe I gave up everything for him. It was a good life Morton and I had here.”

“You weren’t the only girl Cotal was seeing.”

“Really? Somehow I’m not surprised. He was gorgeous.”

“You’re not jealous about that?”

“Irritated, is about as far as it goes.”

“Did Wyobie have a gun?”

“Oh…” She appealed to her husband. “Please.”

“Come now, Chief Investigator,” deSavoel said loftily. “There’s no need to take such a line. Wyobie Cotal was also killed.”

“Was he? We haven’t found a body. In fact, we haven’t found your wife’s body either.”

“If I’d been alive, I would have turned up for rejuvenation,” Tara said sharply. “And I’ll thank you not to open that can of worms.”

“I understand. We do have to examine every possibility.”

“But perhaps not out loud when it can cause such distress,” deSavoel said irately. “This is not pleasant for my wife to raise such specters again after she has finally accustomed herself to complete bodyloss.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Paula said. “To make sure it won’t happen again.”

“Again?” Tara’s voice rose in alarm. She stubbed her cigarette out. “You think I’ll be killed again ?”

“That’s not what I meant. It would be most unusual for a killer to strike at you twice; and you have been alive for over twenty years this time. Please don’t concern yourself about the possibility. So, Wyobie didn’t have a gun?”

“No. Not that I remember.”

“You mentioned other affairs. Were you seeing anybody else at the same time as Cotal?”

“No. Wyobie was quite enough for me.”