Origin in Death (In Death #21)(35)

"Numbers," Eve murmured.

"Essential objectivity, I believe he called it. They were bodies that needed tending, or reconstruction. Bodies that needed to be kept breathing, or terminated. He was hard, but circumstances demanded it. Those who couldn't step back from the horror were useless to those who suffered from that horror."

"His wife was killed during that period."

"I was working in another part of the city at that time. As I remember, he left London immediately upon being notified of her death, and went to his son, who was being kept safe in the country."

"No contact since."

"No. I can't imagine he would have remembered me. I've followed his work, and was pleased that so much of what he'd hoped to do came to be."

"He talked about that? What he hoped to do."

"To me? No." What might have been a smile passed over Summerset's face. "But I heard him speak to other doctors. He wanted to heal, to help, to improve the quality of life."

"He was a perfectionist."

"There's no perfection during war."

"That must have frustrated him."

"It frustrated us all. People were dying all around us. No matter how many we saved, there were more we couldn't reach, couldn't help. A man might be shot down in the street because he had decent shoes. Another might have his throat cut because he had none at all. Frustration is a small word."

Eve chased through her mind. "So his kid's tucked away in the countryside, and his wife's working beside him."

"Not beside, no. She volunteered in a hospital that had been set up to treat injured children, and to house those lost or orphaned."

"He fool around?"

"Excuse me?"

"It's war, he's away from his family. His life's on the line. Did he sleep with anybody?"

''I don't see the purpose in so crude a question, but no, not that I was aware of. He was devoted to his family and his work."

"Okay. I'll get back to you." She got to her feet. "Roarke?"

She moved out of the room, heard Roarke murmur something before he followed her. She waited until they were upstairs before she spoke. "You didn't tell him anything about the data we found."

''No. And it's an uncomfortable position."

"Well, you're going to have to be uncomfortable for a while. I don't know if his murder had its roots back as far as the Urban Wars, but it's something I want to think about. Unless his killer was able to shed a good decade surgically or through enhancements, she wasn't born during that time either. But..."

"She had a mother, a father. And they would have been."

"Yeah. Another possibility. War orphans. Could've started experimenting, treating, placing." She paced the bedroom. "It isn't tidy, is it, just to leave kids scavenging around on the streets, during a war, after the madness of war? Some of them won't survive, and you're in the business of survival. You're interested in improving that quality of life. But also appearance. See a lot of carnage during a war. Maybe it twisted him up."

She checked her wrist unit. "Where the hell's my warrant?"

She dropped down on the sofa, studied Roarke thoughtfully. "How'd you feel back then, when Summerset took you in off the streets?"

"I got fed, got to sleep in a bed. And nobody was beating the bloody hell out of me on a daily basis." The man who'd seen to that, Roarke thought, had given him a great deal more than clean sheets and food for his belly. "I was half dead anyway when he took me in. By the time I was able to think clearly, get out of bed, I was over my shock at my luck. Considered that he might be a mark, which he disabused me of the first time I tried to pick his pocket. And I learned to be grateful, for the first time in my life."

"So when he told you what to do, when he educated you, housed you, set rules, you went along."

"He didn't put shackles on me. I'd've slipped the locks and run. But yes."

"Yeah." She leaned her head back, stared at the ceiling. "And then he becomes family. Father, mother, teacher, doctor, priest. The ball of it."

"In essence. Ah, speaking of family. Several members of mine will be coming over from Clare. Now that I've done the thing, I don't know quite what to expect."

She looked back at him. "Well, that makes a pair of us."

Chapter Six

TICK-TOCK, EVE THOUGHT, AND SCOWLED AT THE 'link she'd set on the dining room table. There was a cheery fire in the hearth and some sort of fancy pig meat on her plate.

"Don't you know a watched 'link never beeps." She shifted her gaze to Roarke as he stabbed some meat from her plate onto his fork and held it out to her. "Be a good girl and eat your dinner."

"I know how to feed myself." But because it was there, she took the offering. Damn good pig. "He'll have wiped documents by now."

"Anything you can do about that?"

"No."

"Then you might as well enjoy your dinner."

There were some sort of fancy potatoes to go with the fancy pig. She gave them a try. "They've got to have money hidden somewhere. You interested in finding it?"

Roarke sipped his wine, cocked his head. "Lieutenant, I'm always interested in finding money."