“Miss Friemann?” he said desolately. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” she said, unworried by the fact that he hadn’t called her “Doctor,” let alone “Inspector,” although she certainly wasn’t unaware of it. “What happened, Mr. Sweet? Have you collected the wafers from the security cams?”

“Gave them to a DS,” Sweet assured her. “DI Grundy wants to run through them again, but I’ve taken a peek and the bombers are all wrapped up. Won’t have left much evidence for you, thanks to the so-called smart fabrics they were wearing.” His own uniform was thoroughly dead, and Lisa guessed that his private wardrobe was even farther behind the times than her own.

“We’ll get something,” she said, trying to sound optimistic.

“Wasn’t my fault, Miss,” Sweet insisted. “They hacked into the system and sent false pictures to my VDU’s. They had smartcards, you know—didn’t trigger a single alarm.”

“How many were there?” she asked, unable to remember whether she’d already been told.

“Three of them. Heads inside helmets—purpose-built, not ordinary motorcycling helmets. Looked like they were pretending to be SAS commandos. Only one thing I could make out for sure.”

“What was that?”

“They were women. Two of them, at least. Third might have been a man—probably was, judging by the way he dragged the prof along the corridor like a sack of potatoes, but not the ones with dart guns. Doesn’t make much difference these days. Remember that evil bitch you banged up after the Dog Riots thirty years back? What was it she called herself?”

“Keeper Pan,” Lisa said automatically, slightly surprised by the readiness of her memory.

“Let her out again soon enough, though, didn’t they? Animal Liberation Front!Is thiswhat they call liberation?”

For the moment, Lisa thought, Animal Liberationists were probably the least likely suspects. Even in their heyday, animal libbers had used firebombs only against people. Mice were right at the bottom of their hierarchy of deserving species, way below pigs and rabbits, but they were innocents nevertheless. Keeper Pan and her friends would never have firebombed Mouseworld. Lisa did, however, pause to wonder whether the person who’d shot the phone out of her hand could possibly have been a woman. It had been too dark to judge the shape of the black shell-suit, but there might have been something else that would give her a clue, if only she could focus her memories….

“He had a lot of stuff in here, didn’t he?” the security man went on. “Stuff from way back—been inoculating mice with voodoo for forty years, they say, trying to work magic. Never came to anything much, though, did it?”

After a moment’s confusion, Lisa realized that the hein Sweet’s statement wasn’t Edgar Burdillon, but Morgan Miller.

“Did they try to get into any of the other labs or offices?” she asked sharply.

Sweet shook his head. “Came straight here,” he said. “Seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Didn’t go to the upper floors at all. Why would they want to burn Mouseworld, Miss Friemann?”

“I don’t know,” Lisa said, marveling at the absurdity that the casual shooting of a once-eminent scientist did not seem bizarre at all by comparison with the destruction of a classic experiment in animal population dynamics. The fact that Ed Burdillon had been driven away in an ambulance, his life endangered by toxic fumes, hardly seemed to have registered with the old man.

“I tried to call him,” said Sweet—still presumably referring to Morgan Miller. “So did the police. He isn’t answering his phone.”

“Is he away?” Lisa asked.

“Not that I know of,” the security guard replied, still shaking his head in disbelief. “I tried Stella too, but everyone sets their answer-phones these days, day and night alike. Too many nuisance calls, I guess.”

Lisa knew that Stella Filisetti was Morgan Miller’s latest research assistant. She didn’t know if Morgan was screwing her, but she assumed that Sweet believed he was. It had been Morgan’s habit since time immemorial, and he wasn’t the kind of man to give up on his habits while there was still breath in his body.

Morgan had been seventy-three years old on his last birthday, but the last time Lisa had seen him, he’d assured her that he was “as fit as a flea.” Seventy-three wasn’t old these days, no matter what Police Admin and the top men at Fire & Rescue might think. The university certainly hadn’t tried to force Morgan to retire, even though the younger members of the department were sometimes wont to say, with a sneer, that he hadn’t produced a single worthwhile result in thirty years.

“I’m sorry, Miss,” Thomas Sweet went on. “Maybe I should’ve called you too, but I didn’t have your number. I dialed 999 to get the fire department and the police, then I tried Professor Burdillon’s office. Couldn’t get through, of course—I didn’t know then that he’d gone downstairs. I tried Dr. Miller and got no reply, so I tried Stella, then Dr. Chan. No reply from any of them. Not one.’9He seemed deeply resentful of his failure, as if he suspected that he would be held responsible for it.

Their conversation was interrupted by another new arrival: a woman in her mid-thirties, with short-cropped hair and a raptorial attitude. Lisa had been hoping to see Mike Grundy before Judith Kenna found her, but it was too late now.

It didn’t seem to have occurred to the chief inspector that there were times when a professional smile, however sardonic, wasn’t entirely appropriate. “Mr. Sweet,” she said mildly, “DS Hapgood would like another word with you.”

She waited for the security guard to go through the doorway before continuing. “It’s good of you to race out here to give us the benefit of your special expertise, Dr. Friemann, but you really should have remained at the other crime scene. Senior officers ought to set an example in procedural matters, don’t you think? I see that you’re hurt too. Is that a bandageon your hand? You really ought to have seen a doctor before rushing off like that—Detective Inspector Grundy seems to have been extremely irresponsible.”

“Don’t blame Mike,” Lisa said frostily. “My home first-aid kit’s ancient, but the dressing will do the job just as well as a fancy sealant. It’s just a slight cut in an awkward place, plus a few scratches on my arm. There was nothing I could do at home but trample on evidence—and I dohave special knowledge of this location and the victim. When the men from the Ministry of Defence get here, they’ll want to talk to me.”

“I’m sure they will,” the chief inspector purred. “Have you formed any conclusions?”

“Not yet,” Lisa admitted, wishing there were some vital clue in plain view whose significance she alone had been able to see. Desperate to even the score, she said: “Have you managed to figure out why they blacked out the center of town?”

“I think so,” said Kenna, her smile becoming smug as well as sardonic. “I presume they did it partly to provide getaway cover for the vehicles carrying the bombers and your own intruders, but the main reason must have been to cloak the third—and probably most important—part of their scheme.”

Lisa suppressed a curse and managed to sound completely neutral as she said: “Which was?”

“The abduction of Dr. Morgan Miller,” the chief inspector informed her.

FOUR

You might have done better to go to that crime scene rather than this one, given that you’re familiar with his house,” the chief inspector went on while Lisa struggled to absorb the news. “As I said, DI Grundy seems to have acted rather recklessly in bringing you here without waiting to get a better view of the whole picture. You might still be able to advise the investigating officers as to what has been taken from Dr. Miller’s house, but it’s too late now to think of sending you over there before the MOD team arrives. The intruders destroyed his main homestation, just as they smashed yours, but they seem to have removed at least one obsolete machine. They haven’t taken all his sequins, wafers, and diskettes—but that’s probably because they’d have needed a van to transport them in.”