The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,83

we might whisper. And the suspect does wonder, and opens the door, and lo, there is the memory of the murder he committed just last Tuesday.”

Unwin looked back the way they had come, troubled by the doubt Lamech had shown at the split in the alley. Until then the watcher had chosen his route without hesitation. If he was unfamiliar with a feature of his own creation, was he exposing himself to some risk? Could they have taken a wrong turn?

“Curiously,” Lamech said, “Miss Palsgrave’s device somehow pushes those boundaries a bit. When you review a recording, you can see outside the suspect’s immediate perspective: peer around corners, open books, search under beds. The machine seems to pick up low registers emanating from deep in the subconscious. It has a kind of peripheral vision and sees things neither the dreamer nor the watcher thinks he can see. Another advantage we have over Hoffmann.”

Unwin, still looking over his shoulder, saw something that astonished him. A door opened, and a woman slipped quietly into the alley. She followed after Lamech, keeping close to the walls, a shadow among shadows, quick as the rain. When a stray beam of moonlight caught her face, Unwin nearly startled awake. Back in the third archive, his legs twitched and his feet became tangled in the blanket.

It was Miss Greenwood’s daughter, her plaid coat belted around her waist, her hair pinned tightly beneath her gray cap.

Lamech failed to notice that his dream had been infiltrated. Unwin shouted at him, tugged at his coat, pointed at their pursuer, all to no effect. The woman in the plaid coat trailed only a few steps behind them. Unwin was invisible to her—she was part of the recording—but she watched Lamech intently, pausing only to adjust the gray cap over her hair. Unwin thought, She is asleep, it is the night before last, and hours from now she will go to Central Terminal and drop her umbrella, and I will fail to pick it up.

They were drawing close to the carnival. The streets were suffused with hazy white light, and Unwin could hear the music clearly now—it was that of a hurdy-gurdy or a barrel organ. The watcher rounded a corner, wiping his eyes and blinking a little. Unwin followed him, and the woman in the plaid coat came after.

“For the first time since the Agency adopted dream detection as standard practice,” Lamech said, “unauthorized operatives have learned the truth of what we watchers do. If you are indeed seeing this, Mr. Unwin, then you are one of two. I’m sure you can guess who the other is.”

At the mention of Unwin’s name, the woman in the plaid coat narrowed her eyes and looked around. Seeing no one else, she continued on, but at a greater distance than before. So the daughter of Cleopatra Greenwood knew his name. Had she known who he was when she dropped her umbrella at Central Terminal? Somehow she had contrived to be hired as an underclerk and then promoted to Unwin’s own desk. But her talents were such that she could infiltrate even an experienced watcher’s dream. Cleo may have been concerned for her daughter’s well-being, but to Unwin she seemed able to take care of herself.

“A week ago,” Lamech said, “someone stole my copy of The Manual of Detection and gave it to Detective Sivart. He had seen the book before, of course, knew it front to back. But there was something different about this edition. It included an eighteenth chapter, detailing the technique termed oneiric detection by its author. Sivart was furious. Why had this technique been denied to him all these years? Why hadn’t someone told him? Why hadn’t I told him? That’s what he asked me when he stormed into my office first thing that morning.

“I had to tell him something. So I told him the truth. I told him oneiric detection was deemed too dangerous by the overseer to be included in editions beyond the first. Only watchers were to be trusted with its secrets. Detectives, while benefiting from its existence, would remain in the dark, if you will. Sivart didn’t like being in the dark. He told me he was going to win the war.

“ ‘What war?’ I asked him.

“ ‘The war against Enoch Hoffmann,’ he said.

“He thought that by breaking in to the sleeping mind of his enemy he could somehow learn his secrets. Forget that Hoffmann had been in hiding for years, kept always in check by