Something Coming Through

26. Official Drunk

Mangala | 27–28 July

Vic took the boy detective to a joint everyone called the Belgian Pub, even though it was run by a Dutch couple. A small dark wood-panelled place that served all kinds of imported beers. They worked their way through several bottles of Lion Heart Stout and something called Feral Hop Hog that Skip championed, and Vic told the boy detective exactly why he’d fucked up with the consulate.

‘It’s politics. The UN and City Hall know the consulates are into all kinds of undercover shit. They’re looking out for the interests of their countries, various companies…The UN turns a blind eye to all that because it can’t keep the shuttle operations running without international cooperation. And City Hall doesn’t want to jeopardise the export market and piss off companies that have established factories here, bring in income and keep citizens in gainful employment. I know why you wanted to chase down that line of inquiry, but you’re going to have to forget about it.’

Skip was subdued after his run-in with the captain, but he wouldn’t let it go. ‘Look, I know I fucked up, but I also know that there’s a connection between Redway and those stowaways. Redway was zapped by a weapon known to have been used by McBride. The British consulate checked out the licence that McBride took out for an Elder Culture site, and a drawing of the site was found in that can. It could be, couldn’t it, that Parsons is hiding out in the consulate.’

‘If he is, you won’t be able to talk to him.’

‘A man was killed. Aren’t we supposed to find out who did it?’

‘Not if he died in the service of his country. The captain told you to ease up on the case, didn’t she? Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. And from now on, everything you do, you’re going to check with me first. You want to piss, you hold it in until I give you permission.’

But Skip wasn’t going to let it go easily. ‘I talked to drug enforcement about the shipping container. It was supposed to go to an address in Idunn’s Valley, but the address doesn’t exist. Someone sent it all the way from Earth to a place that isn’t on the map, and someone in the terminal checked it off. I was kind of hoping to sit in on interviews with the checkers, the people who track the containers from the point of unloading to their place in the stacks, and then onto the trucks that take them to their final destination. One of them was in on this thing for sure.’

The boy detective had a ragged, distracted look that Vic recognised: someone whose case was eating their life. He tried to explain how it worked, how some cases fell open at a touch, how others were real headbangers that refused to give up their secrets.

‘But the thing is, there are always more cases. We had more than six hundred murders in the city last year. Not to mention attempted murders, violent assaults, kidnapping, extortion…People come up, they think it’s the Wild West. Or the place drives them crazy. Six hundred murders, and we have fourteen investigators in the squad, basically doing triage. So when things don’t work out with one case, you don’t keep banging your head against it. You move on to the next. But that doesn’t mean we forget about the ones that got away. Sometimes, a year or two later, the doer will get drunk and confess to their partner. Or get religion and turn themselves in. Or they’ll get banged up for something else, boast about how they got away with murder to someone on their work gang who dibs them in exchange for a reduced sentence. Ask anyone on the squad,’ Vic said, ‘we all have a story like that. So here’s how it is with this one. While you’re waiting for Parsons to turn up, you need to be doing something else instead of getting into other people’s business.’

But he could see that Skip wasn’t listening. His second year on Mangala, Vic had been out on the playa and come across a research team that had trapped a stalker. A thin angular biomachine like a praying mantis crossed with a gazelle. It had rushed to and fro in the cage, battering against bars. Never letting up, never giving in. Skip was a little like that. He wasn’t ever going to give up on his whodunnit.

So Vic ordered another round and changed the topic. He talked about his time as a police constable in Birmingham back on Earth, walking the beat in a pointy helmet and carrying a truncheon instead of a gun — well, most of the time, there had been some serious riots in the long economic stagnation before the Spasm. Skip asked him if that was why he didn’t carry a gun now.

‘I carried a gun before I became a murder police. It really was like the Wild West in Petra, back in the day. But on this job the worst has already happened when we roll up. It’s about reading the scene. It’s about understanding people, not exchanging shots with them.’

‘You’ve been on the job a while, I guess.’

‘I’m seven years shy of my twenty, let’s put it that way.’

They got into talking about what they’d do after they retired. Vic told Skip that there were plenty of good security jobs for retired investigators. ‘I’m not talking about foot patrol in shopping malls. I have a good friend at the university, campus police,’ Vic said, and with a pang thought of his partner, Chris Okupe. Skip told him about his plan to do his twenty and buy a spread in Idunn’s Valley and raise sheep, finally said it was time to head home. Vic had a haphazard memory of moving on to another bar, of dancing with a woman to a jukebox playing Bruce Springsteen, but he woke alone in his bed in his bachelor efficiency, and had to drink about three litres of water and stand under a shower alternating between hot and cold until he felt even halfway human. He was getting old, was what it was. His aunties would be scandalised that he was approaching fifty and still lacked a family. Scandalised, but also righteously pleased that their prediction that no good would come of flying off to another world had proven to be absolutely correct.

He managed to get into work more or less on time, and found Mikkel Madsen doing his helicopter thing again. Saying, ‘I am grievously displeased with you, Investigator Gayle.’

‘If this is about the kid, I talked to him. Gave him the full benefit of my wisdom,’ Vic said. ‘So if he’s gone and done something stupid, I don’t want to know. I intend to eat as many painkillers as I can stand, throw up as and when necessary, and otherwise sit in a quiet corner and do paperwork.’

‘You tied one on with him.’

‘We went on an official drunk, as ordered.’

‘Yet he comes in here hours before the shift starts, fighting fit and happy. You know why?’

‘You’re going to tell me, aren’t you?’

‘He had a busy morning while you were sleeping off your official drunk. He checked in on both Drury and McBride. And it seems that both are in the wind. What the kid wants to do is go to Idunn’s Valley. That is where the excavation site is located, and that is where he thinks Drury and McBride are headed. Also that biologist who took a copy of that excavation licence. The captain had to give him a little lesson on the facts of life, how we don’t trespass lightly on other jurisdictions, proper procedures, the difference between hard and circumstantial evidence et cetera. The kind of lesson that I believe I asked you to deliver.’

‘He’s stubborn, but I’ll get him straightened out. Where is he?’

‘He is working a case I gave him,’ Mikkel said. ‘Two guys went at it in a do-it-yourself place. People are stripping the shelves because they think the dust storm is going to be Armageddon. One accused the other of queue jumping and stabbed him with a chisel. Assault with intent. The kid has about fifty witnesses to interview. Trying to iron out the kinks in all the conflicting stories should keep him out of mischief for a couple of days. More than long enough for you to find him something else that will usefully occupy his keen mind.’

‘I’ll do my best. Meanwhile, do you have any aspirin?’