The Time Traveller's Ball (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 1)

Chapter 2

II

“The last dance had just finished,” said Brian Mammon, “and the Ball was beginning to wind down.”

            The president of Codex Bank was a small, plump man in his forties, with thinning black hair and a moustache, well-fed features and small hands that he kept wringing as if he was shaking water off them. As he was the host of this party and had just had the Prince of Jupiter shot dead in his home and office, I could hardly blame him for wanting to wash his hands of the whole business as quickly as possible.

            “Is this really a Ball?” said Mirabi, looking around. “You’ve got barely fifteen guests.”

            “His Highness had excused himself to go to the executive’s grav-jacuzzi down the corridor,” Mammon continued. “He’d been gone for about twenty minutes before we heard him screaming. He came back in; running full pelt like a racing lizard and… and got no further than that.”

            “Out of the hot tub and into the line of fire,” said Lucian Hell, who was helping himself to one of the champagne bottles.

            While Mammon had been describing what happened, Mirabi had secured the crime scene. Three small shield-nodes from the mini-kit where placed in a triangle around the body. They projected a low, pale gray energy dome over the body and the surrounding floor. It would keep the crime scene intact, warm and uncontaminated until we could call forensics in. Which I did not want to do just yet.

             “Did anyone see the shooter?” I said.

            “Four of us,” said Zachary Midnight. “We were standing near the door when it happened. Myself, our hosts and Colonel Thor.”

            “Could you identify them?”

            “No. We saw him only in silhouette,” said Xandra Mammon.

            Brian Mammon’s wife was a statuesque Chinese beauty in her late thirties, tall, cream skinned and beautiful, with jet black hair pulled back into a shining bun. She wore a holo-cloth cheomsang in pink, blue and purple, the colours sliding about all over her, as she stepped forward and waved a graceful hand before the door’s sensor. The door folded open, revealing a long corridor with several door s running of it, ending in a T junction with...

            Several of the guests winced and looked away. Others shielded their eyes with their hands. My helmet automatically lowered its visor opacity a few shades to protect mine. There was a large window at the end of the corridor that looked out onto the northern curve of Mars. The sunlight reflecting on the ice cap blazed painfully bright through the window, flooding the top of the corridor with whiteness. Anyone standing there would have looked like a shrinking black shadow.

            “So I see,” I said.

            “Why makes you so sure it was a he?” said Mirabi.

            “Height and build,” said Colonel Abraham Thor. “It was not quite so bright earlier before the sun was fully up. Average size and not muscle heavy. Short hair. Clearly a marksman, and in good shape from the speed he ran off.”