The Prometheus Incident, A Martian Murder Mystery Page 7

Chapter Seven – More Questions

  Richardson walked into the familiar hallway and hung up his coat. The dog ran up to greet him. He consciously shook himself and allowed the case to fall away from his mind. It was still early on and he knew that the best way to make progress was to relax and let his subconscious do the work.

  The dog was followed by the kids, with Kate standing at the back smiling, still dressed in her work clothes. She came up and kissed him on the cheek and he put his arms around her and held her tight. Even after all these years, this was all he needed. Holding Kate, he could cope with the remnants of a hard day.

  “So, what’s this mysterious case about?” she asked when he let her go.

  He shook his head. “Can’t talk about it,” he said. “I don’t want to anyway. Tonight, I just want to leave it alone and relax.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “Come on, your dinner’s ready. We’ve already eaten.” He ate his dinner watching the news. The Prometheus story had already been forgotten and no new information was available. For this he was grateful. Information was his only weapon. He knew how the crew of the Prometheus had died and, if he was ever to find the murderer, it was crucial that this remain his secret.

  It had been a long time between sleeps, so he went to bed early, even before the kids, and was deeply asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He slept well that night, with no dreams that he could remember, and when he woke in the morning, his plan for that day was already set in his mind. There were questions he needed to ask.

  Richardson had forgotten that he had asked Wilson to call around early, so he arrived in the middle of the early morning chaos. Richardson had to gulp down the last of his coffee and grabbed some toast to go as he went out to the car, leaving his wife to get the kids to school. She was a patient woman but he knew he would have some making up to do when the case was over.

  “Where to, boss?” Wilson asked as he climbed into the car. “You need to go back to the monastery again?”

  Richardson shook his head. “No. No more helicopters,” he said. He smiled at the fleeting look of disappointment that crossed Wilson’s face – rides in high-speed military helicopters were a rare privilege. “Maybe tomorrow. Today, I think I can get the answers I need in Melbourne. I need to go back to the university.”

  “You want to talk to the professor again?” Wilson asked as he pulled away from the kerb.

  “Yes,” Richardson answered. “I need to get another opinion about this DeWitt character and his relationship to the rest of the crew.”

  “You want to call ahead and make an appointment?” Wilson asked.

  Richardson sat back and considered for a moment. “No, he said at last. “Let’s surprise him. I don’t want him to have time to rehearse his reactions.” He was a keen student of body language. He knew it often revealed more than the spoken words, but only if it was spontaneous and Professor Freeman didn’t strike him as a spontaneous kind of guy.

  He walked into the professor’s office just barely behind the flustered personal assistant who was trying to announce his arrival. He knew he was being rude but he wanted to upset the professional calm with which he had been met the day before. Once again, however, it was almost as if the professor was expecting them. His only reaction was a slightly raised eyebrow at the abruptness of their entry.

  “Once again, welcome, gentlemen,” he said. He gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. “Please, be seated. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Thank you, Professor,” Richardson said as he sat down. “If you don’t mind, we need to get an independent opinion on some theories we’ve been given about what happened to the Prometheus.”

  Professor Freeman smiled and spread his hands in a gesture of acceptance. “As I said before, I’m always happy to help the police in any way I can.”

  “Good,” Richardson said. “Mr Carter suggested to us that it might have been caused by Chinese sabotage but Dr O’Connor dismissed that suggestion without even giving it much thought.”

  Professor Freeman nodded. “Martin’s right,” he said. “I guess it would be possible, they were certainly upset at not getting the mission, but it was a bureaucratic tussle – not something you would kill over. Anyway, what would they gain by sabotaging the mission after it had been allocated? They’d already been assigned the next mission, to the Vastis Borealis.”

  Richardson nodded. He was disappointed. The professor showed the same cool, detached front that he had encountered yesterday. He was carefully managing any signals his posture might give. “Both Dr O’Connor and Dr Proctor mentioned Dr DeWitt,” Richardson said. “Dr O’Connor thought he might have been the cause of some bizarre accident while Dr Proctor suggested that he might have killed the other two crew members for not believing his theories about Martian life. Am I correct in thinking that Dr DeWitt was not well liked aboard the Ares II?”

  Professor Freeman nodded. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead,” he said, “but he was not a likeable man. He and Lisa really didn’t get on. He tried to bully her into accepting his belief in extra-terrestrial life and trying to bully Lisa was never a good option. She was very prepared to hit back – hard. It was all verbal, of course, but there was real tension and most of the crew were on Lisa’s side. The commander had to keep a very close watch that it didn’t get out of hand.”

  “Perhaps it did,” Richardson suggested. “Perhaps it drove DeWitt to kill or even cause him to be killed himself. Perhaps Dr Proctor hit back: not just hard, but permanently.”

  Freeman shook his head. “No, I don’t believe it,” he said. “Look, on any mission like that the crew are going to be a group of ambitious people: all with their own goals, all from different backgrounds. Of course you’re going to get the occasional conflict and, in the close confines of a spaceship, these can get very intense. However, you do not get selected onto the crew if you can’t cope with conflict. Anyway, as I said, the commander was aware of it and kept a close watch.”

  “So you don’t believe either of these theories?” Richardson asked.

  Freeman shrugged carelessly. “They’re both possible, I guess, but to me, neither of them seem very probable.”

  “Thank you, Professor,” Richardson said. “I’m inclined to agree with you. There’s one more thing, if you don’t mind?”

 

  Again Freeman shrugged. “Fire away, Detective,” he said.

  “Close to the time of the incident, your data recordings were turned off. Why was that?” Freeman looked embarrassed and turned to look out the window before answering. When he turned back he had a rueful grin on his face.

  “I was using the polarimeter to image the surface,” he said. “Most of my colleagues, then and now, would say that it wasn’t only a waste of instrument time but a stupid waste of time. That’s why I didn’t want it recorded. I was trying to find the kind of light polarisation caused by organic matter. If it had worked it would have been a real coup. I would’ve been the one to find life on Mars and beaten DeWitt at his own game. It didn’t work, of course. Mars is barren. Life just never evolved there.”

  Richardson stood up. “Well, once again, thank you, Professor. You have been very helpful,” he said. It was only momentary, but Richardson noticed a slight relaxation of Freeman’s shoulders as they shook hands. Freeman was secretly relived that the interview was over.

  “Where to now, boss?” Wilson asked as they got back in the car.

  “Downtown,” Richardson replied. “We need to talk to Lisa Proctor again.”

  When they got to Dr Proctor’s office, the view from the window was just as spectacular in the morning as it had been the night before. Detective Inspector Richardson couldn’t help wondering how anyone got any work done with such a view to look at. He gave a mental shrug and dismissed the idea. It was not his problem. He turned to consider the woman before him. She was handsome rather than beautiful, dressed in an expensive-looking business suit and clearly impatient with this interruption to
her day.

  “Once again, thank you for agreeing to see us, Dr Proctor,” he said.

  She gave a rather grim smile. “I don’t believe I was given much of a choice,” she said.

  Richardson ignored the comment. “We have been following up on your comments about Dr DeWitt,” he said. “It seems that he was not a well-loved member of the crew. Dr O’Connor, in particular, seems to have had cause to dislike him.”

  Proctor nodded. “He did,” she said. “But it didn’t really seem to affect Martin, or Elise either, for that matter. His comments were like water off a duck’s back. Martin certainly didn’t like him but he also had absolutely no respect for him or his ideas. He thought they were just wild, baseless speculation. So he just didn’t care what he said. You know, it was like the chattering from the peanut gallery. He just took no notice. I think it really annoyed DeWitt that he couldn’t get under Martin’s skin.”

  “He could get under your skin though,” Richardson suggested.

  Proctor gave a rueful smile and nodded. “Yes, he got to me,” she said. “I hated him but I didn’t kill him. I certainly didn’t kill the other two. I loved Elise, everyone did, and Bob Cole was one of the noblest and bravest men you could meet.” She stood up quickly and turned to look out the window. There was a break in her voice as she said, “I was proud to call both of them friends.”

  Richardson waited until she composed herself and turned around. “What about Professor Freeman?” he asked. “What was his relationship with DeWitt?”

  Lisa Proctor looked a bit vague as she answered. “It was okay, I guess,” she said. “I wouldn’t say they were bosom buddies but Charlie was one of the few crew members who didn’t have an active animosity to DeWitt. I don’t think they had much to do with each other.”

  Richardson nodded and again consulted his wrist data device. “I have a couple of technical questions too,” he said. “Who had access to the instruments? Was it the whole crew or only certain crew members?”

  “Only the crew members who had a direct need for a particular instrument had access to it,” she replied. “Access was password controlled.”

  “Who administered those passwords?” Richardson asked.

  “I did,” she replied. “I was responsible for the operation of the whole instrument suite.”

  “So, by controlling the passwords, you had effective access to all the instruments?” he asked.

  “I did anyway,” she said. “I had to. I needed to do maintenance and calibration testing.”

  “And once you had access, was there any restriction on the instruments operation? Was instrument use logged separately?” Richardson asked.

  She shook her head. “No, but your data log recorded how and when you had used each instrument,” she said. “There was no need for a separate instrument log. You must remember, this was a deep space exploration ship. Everything was limited. There was no room for useless duplication or for frivolous use of the ship’s systems.” Detective Sergeant Wilson let out an involuntary grunt of agreement. He could not imagine Lisa Proctor being frivolous.

  “One last question, if I may,” Richardson said. “How secure were the passwords? Were they actually private or were they the sort of ‘secret’ password that everyone knew?”

  “They were secure,” she answered. “Not only was I in charge of security but all the orbital survey team members were paranoid that someone else would get to analyse their data before they could. This was their big chance to make their mark scientifically and that was a strong incentive not to share.”

  Richardson got out of his chair. “Thank you, Dr Proctor,” Richardson said as he rose to leave. “We won’t take up any more of your time.” They shook hands.

  “Glad to help,” Lisa Proctor said in a voice that suggested the direct opposite.

  “Where to next, boss?” Wilson asked as they were going down in the elevator.

  “Back to the station,” Richardson replied. “I have some reading to do.”