Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(39)

Smith pouted. “Everybody has to be somewhere.”

Rudi leaned on his cane and said, “Did you know my father, Chief Superintendent? Because if you didn’t, I have to admit I can’t come up with a single reason why you should be here.”

“Your father?” Smith looked thoughtful. “No.”

“You do know this is his funeral.” He waved at the church, the mourners, Juhan standing watching them.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. My condolences. Were you close?”

“There were times when I would cheerfully have killed him myself.”

“Not close, then.” Smith smiled. “We’ve identified the chap who was carrying the photograph.”

“You’ve come to tell me that?”

“No, I may have come to arrest you.”

Rudi rubbed his face. “All right, Chief Superintendent, you have my undivided attention.”

“Robert James Spencer,” said Smith, and this time she wasn’t smiling at all. “Age thirty-eight, formerly of 22 Special Air Service Regiment. That’s English Special Forces. He was invalided out four years ago; roadside bomb in Damascus.”

“I told you, I don’t know him.”

“We’ve managed to reconstruct his movements in the week or so before he tried to enter Poland. He seems to have travelled a great deal on false passports.”

Rudi sensed where this was going, and braced himself. “Yes?”

“It seems he was in the Sakha Republic at the same time that a member of a visiting Community delegation was assassinated.”

Rudi frowned. “I hadn’t heard about that.”

“And you won’t; there was a total blackout, witnesses sequestered, everything. We can’t prove Spencer was responsible, but he was there and he had sniper training when he was with the SAS. It seems someone’s been feeding him some very odd medication. He’s in a terrible state.”

“I still don’t know him,” Rudi said. “And if you’re going down the road of assuming he’s a Coureur, don’t. They don’t do assassination.”

“That you know of.”

“Chief Superintendent, there is no life on Pluto that I know of. Come on. Please.” He looked over to the church; people were starting to go in. “I need to go.”

Smith followed his gaze. “Yes, of course.”

“Who died, by the way? In Sakha?”

“Ah,” she said. “That’s interesting. He was with the Community delegation visiting this biodome or whatever it is, but he wasn’t from the Community. Turns out he was actually a citizen of Dresden-Neustadt.”

Rudi had a good poker face. “Oh?”

“Chap named Mundt. Ring any bells?”

“No.”

“Former citizen of the Neustadt, I should say,” Smith corrected herself. “It’s a very confused situation. Jurisdiction is a nightmare.”

Rudi said, “I have nothing to do with this and I can’t help you, Chief Superintendent. I don’t know this man Spencer, I have no idea who he is or what he wants, and I have no idea why he was carrying that photo. It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you. More so, I suspect.”

Smith was studying his face. He had not had any dealings with EUPol before, but it suddenly occurred to him that she had quite an unusual way of doing things. He said, “May I see your ID again, please?”

“Of course.” She took the card out and held it in front of his face. They both knew how easy it was to forge pretty much any kind of document these days – certainly in terms of a visual examination – but he thought it was important to make the point.

“Thank you,” he said, after what he thought was a reasonable interval. “I can’t help you, Chief Superintendent,” he said again. “I wish I could, if only to get you to leave me alone. Now, are you going to arrest me? Because if you’re not, I should attend my father’s funeral.”

“I’m not going to arrest you,” she said. “Today.”

He sighed.

“Go,” said Smith. “You’ve got my details if you think of anything to tell me. I’m staying at P?daste Manor tonight, if you feel like having dinner.”

“Your expense claims must be a thing to behold.”

“That’s the great thing about the EU,” she said with a smile. “Lots of money, but hardly any members to spend it on these days.” And with that she turned to go. “See you later.”

Rudi watched her walk away, mentally cursing in several European languages. He’d been looking forward to trying out P?daste’s tasting menu. He looked towards the church, where several aged men were carrying what seemed to be a long laundry basket on their shoulders. His father had arrived.





NO ONE KNEW where Leo had put Mundt, which was unfortunate. A lot of people, so far as Rudi knew, had spent a lot of time and resources trying to find the Professor in the intervening years. He was among them. And now... what? He turned up as part of a Community delegation in Sakha – and what the hell had they been doing all the way out there? – and someone had assassinated him. There was just too much Story there to process all at once.

Rudi thought about all this while he stood at the back of the church and watched his father’s funeral. Toomas had left only two instructions about what to do after his death, apparently. The first was that he was to have a Humanist funeral, and the second was that he wanted to be buried in Lahemaa.