Chapter Eleven – Aftermath
As Mars approached solar periapsis, its closest approach to the sun, the southern hemisphere started to heat up and the frozen carbon dioxide covering the southern ice cap began to evaporate. On the floor of the Hellas Basin, the wind rose. Dust blew and sand shifted. The sky darkened with the storm. Soon all the track marks and footprints were obliterated and all was as it had been before. Only the bodies were missing, taken away to be marked and remembered by their own kind.
It was late in the day and the forensics team were finishing up their work. Chief Inspector Roger Gordon was happily briefing the press on the outcome of the investigation, heaping praise on Richardson but basking in the glory himself. Richardson didn’t care. He was just glad, very glad, he didn’t have to talk to the press himself. Nevertheless, he was frowning as he finally got into the car and asked Wilson to drive him home.
“What’s wrong, boss?” Wilson asked. “You should be happy. This is a real feather in your cap. You just solved the ultimate cold case, murders that happened twenty years ago and on another planet, and you did it in just under three days. This is the stuff of legend.” Richardson just grunted, clearly unhappy. Wilson considered his boss’s mood as he pulled out into the traffic.
“You think you got the wrong man?” he asked.
Richardson shook his head. “No, I’m sure he was guilty,” he answered. “It’s just that something has bothered me about this case right from the beginning. It’s just been too easy. It ran almost like a scripted play. Also, Freeman’s reactions and body language were always weird. Why? Because he already knew that we would be coming for him. He knew that we would find him out.”
Wilson shrugged. “Well, he was guilty, wasn’t he?” he said. “You know, the guilty flee … etc.”
“It’s not only that,” Richardson said. “They asked for me by name. Why? Because they knew that I was good, that I could be depended on to follow the trail of breadcrumbs and get the right answer. But they also knew that I, a local policeman, wouldn’t have the resources to look much beyond that trail. I was led to find Freeman guilty by someone who already knew that he was. The question is, how did they know? I hate loose ends, especially important ones, and I don’t like being treated like a puppet, a mere functionary.”
Wilson smiled; being treated like a mere functionary was something he was used to. “Just relax and enjoy it, boss,” he said. Richardson sat back and scowled at the Melbourne traffic. Then he pulled out a small tablet and started reviewing the case files. All the data were the same as they had been before; there was nothing beyond the trail of breadcrumbs he now believed he had been manipulated into following. In disgust, he handed the tablet to Wilson as they pulled up outside his house. Wilson flipped through a few screens while Richardson gathered up his things. He stopped at a picture of the mission commander and Colonel Prentice sitting at an outdoor table.
“When and where was this photo taken, boss?” he asked.
“It was in Alice Springs,” Richardson answered after glancing casually at the photo. “A passing tourist recognised the commander and put the photo up on their social media page. From their expressions, they weren’t too happy about being photographed. Don’t blame them, fame can be a pest.”
“So, you didn’t look at it too closely,” Wilson said.
“No,” Richardson replied. He took the tablet back, curious about what his sergeant was getting at. “I checked out the timing. It was just after one of the initial mission training exercises at Gosse’s Bluff. It’s only in the file because the computer highlighted the names. I discounted it. After all, it’s only two crew members having lunch together after a training exercise. Surely they’re allowed to do that.”
“Boss, you’re getting old,” Wilson said smiling. “Left hand … finger … both of them.”
Richardson looked at the image and suddenly its significance dawned on him. Everything – the priority given to the investigation, the incredible security, the motive for murder – it all slotted neatly into place and he knew he’d been used.
“Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit …”
Half a world away, in a plush and expensive office that befitted the status of its occupant, William Chang sat alone well after office hours: Dr William Chang, formerly commander of the Ares II mission to the planet Mars and currently Director of the United Nations Space Agency, one of the most powerful people on Earth. Against one wall there was an archaic bookshelf filled with antique, hardcover volumes. In stark contrast, the opposite wall was dominated by a holographic image of the surface of Mars. It showed a space-suited astronaut giving a mock military salute to the United Nations Flag. Behind him stretched the monotonous plain and endless red dust that formed the floor of the Hellas Basin. A third wall was a ceiling-to-floor window which showed a confusion of lights as the city of Geneva worked through the night.
Dr Chang had a glass in his hand and there was a half-empty bottle of whiskey on his desk. On his finger was a ring that he hadn’t worn for twenty years. He was looking at a photograph which he normally kept locked in his private desk drawer. It was the photograph of a young woman in her early thirties, dressed in a green flight suit. She was blonde and attractive in a competent, ‘no nonsense’ sort of way. Dr Chang shook his head with sorrow. After all these years he must still keep their secret. Only one other person had ever found out and that had caused total disaster. They had tried to warn him off but how could they have known what his reaction would be? He ground his teeth in both anger and grief, undiminished by the years.
“I got him for you, Elise,” he said, his voice slurred by drink and emotion. “It’s only now I could do it. It’s taken me years but I made him pay. Just like I swore he would.” His eyes filled with tears as he raised his glass in one more toast to the memory of his wife.
Epilogue
After the funeral, Father Mulcahey was glad to relax in the quarters assigned to him at Schiparelli Base. It had been a busy day. The funeral of the three long-dead explorers had been a huge and formal affair, full of officials from the agency and base management. He needed to rest. Tomorrow he had two baptisms and a wedding, as well as the routine duties of a visiting chaplain. Yet he found it hard to settle into his prayers and kept looking out his window to the reddish hills of the crater rim.
It was a sad and yet somehow appropriate thing, he thought, to be mourning death on a dead planet, a planet where life just never took hold. Then he corrected himself. No, this was a planet where life is only now starting to take hold. He thought of the couple he would marry tomorrow, finally free of the restrictions of the agency and setting out on their own. He thought of the children he would baptise, of the people of the base who did not work for the space agency, getting married and raising families. Earth was losing control. Life is just beginning on this planet, he thought, and in the final analysis, that’s why we’re here. He smiled then, as he settled into his meditations.
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Joseph H.J. Leach
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