Something Coming Through

10. Do The Right Thing

Mangala | 25 July

As they drove back to the UN building, Skip at the wheel, Vic explained why they’d caught a break, how the whodunnit could be rolled up into Alain Boudin’s ongoing investigation of the ray-gun murders.

‘They were all drug-related. And Alain knows who did them. Cal McBride. He calls himself a businessman, but deals in meq. Runs a little gang of hooligans who trap biochines, extract the precursor from their blood, cook it, and sell the resulting product. We’ll show Dr Ngu’s report to Alain and point out that she concludes the cause of death is identical to his cases. And he’ll have to eat it. How about that? I’m beginning to think you aren’t such bad luck to have around after all.’

Skip didn’t look particularly grateful, saying, ‘So why isn’t this guy in prison? I mean, I guess he can’t be, if you think he did Redway.’

‘He was in prison, as a matter of fact, but not for the murders. Alain was putting the case together when McBride went down for something else. Some kind of sting run by drug enforcement. Alain and the prosecutor tried to get him to agree to add the murders to the other charges, time to be served concurrently, but McBride’s lawyer wouldn’t have any of it. McBride went to jail and the murder cases went cold. But if he can be put in the frame for this one, he’ll fall for all the rest, too.’

Skip drove, thinking about that. As if it needed thinking about. But he had a hard-on for this, his first murder, and Vic thought that he might have to lean on the kid to make him see sense. He remembered his own first time. A domestic, a woman stabbing her boyfriend to death in his sleep because he’d pimped her out for drug money and beaten her once too often. She’d confessed to it right away, explained that she had bought a bottle of vodka to make sure he would pass out before she killed him. Vic had written it up and she’d signed it, and that was that, she’d gone down hard, thirty years building roads or working in one of the factories that the multinationals were beginning to build in what had then been the outskirts of the city. After she’d been sentenced, Vic’s partner had taken him to a bar and said that if she’d gotten her story straight she could have claimed that she’d stabbed the boyfriend while he was attacking her, got off with a couple of years for manslaughter at the most. Vic had asked if he should have given her that option, wondering if he’d done something wrong, and his partner had said, hell no, the dumb bitch had made her own bed, let her lie in it. ‘We let them talk if they want to talk; get them to talk if they don’t. We put the case down, and we move on.’

Chris Okupe. His partner for ten years, until Chris had to have heart surgery and quit the force because he didn’t want to spend the next ten years pushing paper in some bullshit medical-exemption job. A week after he left, on holiday in Idunn’s Valley with his wife before he started his new job, running security at the French consulate, he’d dropped dead of a heart attack in the foyer of a hunting lodge.

Now Skip stopped at a red light behind a swarm of bicycles and mopeds, looking at Vic and saying, ‘It could be that Redway and Parsons came out to do business with Cal McBride. They had a meeting, it went wrong…’

‘No point speculating on the why,’ Vic said. ‘Especially as we can hand this one off to Alain. Poor guy, he starts the day with three fresh bodies, and now he has four. And it isn’t even lunchtime.’

But that wasn’t how it worked.

When Vic started to lay it out, Alain shook his head and said, ‘There is no way I am taking this.’

‘The man was done like all the others,’ Vic said. ‘Some kind of ray gun zapping his brain. You have four just like it. What’s one more?’

‘I have four people killed with what appears to be the same weapon,’ Alain said. ‘But apart from some street talk that is all that connects them.’

‘But you know who did it, don’t you?’ Vic said.

‘I am certain McBride was involved in at least two of the killings, yes. He had motive and opportunity, and I sweated an admission out of one of his corner boys that he had been boasting about them. Letting people know what would happen if they stepped out of line. I brought McBride in and told him this, but he did not even blink, and soon afterwards the corner boy disappeared. And then drug enforcement fucked me in the arse with that sting. They promised they would make him an offer, ask him to confess to the murders in exchange for a break in sentencing. Assuming, you know, that McBride was as stupid as they were. Which he was not. So he went down for their thing, my cases went cold, and fuck it,’ Alain said, ‘I moved on.’

They were talking in the violent-crimes squad room, on the fifth floor of the UN building. All of them in shirtsleeves, ID cards dangling from lanyards around their necks. The squad room was a square space divided by chest-high partitions into a dozen cubicles, each containing two desks. There were glass-fronted offices for Captain Colombier, Sergeant Madsen, and the captain’s secretary and the information clerk down one side, two small interrogation rooms and the locker room on another. A poster by the door to the locker room showed a Jackaroo avatar dressed as Uncle Sam, pointing a white-gloved finger under the caption I Want You for Anal Probing.

‘And now McBride is out of jail, and he’s back to doing what he does,’ Vic said.

‘And you want me to eat your body, and bring those cold cases back into play?’ Alain said. ‘It is not going to happen.’

‘We aren’t handing you another cold case, Alain. We’re handing you a red-hot lead. The opportunity to crack all those murders and make the captain happy.’

‘They’re cold cases, my friend. No longer my problem. And think about this: you say that this guy was killed by a ray gun. Fine. But was it the same weapon as those cold cases? Maybe there are two ray guns. Maybe more.’

‘Maybe. But I don’t believe anyone was zapped in the head while McBride was in jail.’

‘I put that to the prosecutor one time. She said forget it, it is pure speculation. And even if it was the same weapon, it does not mean that the same person used it. Perhaps McBride sold it on or gave it to someone as a Christmas present. Also, you have no evidence that this is in any way drug-related.’

‘My young friend has a theory that Redway and Parsons came here because they’re representing the other end of McBride’s supply chain, back home,’ Vic said. ‘They met with McBride, things went bad, McBride zapped Redway in the head.’

‘Nice story. Here’s another. It could be this guy really is some kind of businessman. He got lost, he was mugged, put up a struggle, and zzzt…’ Alain touched his forefinger to the back of his neck.

Vic said, ‘A mugger with a ray gun?’

Alain shrugged. He had that stubborn, smouldering look. ‘On this world, why not? No, my friend, this one belongs to your partner. I am not eating it for him.’

Skip said, surprising Vic, ‘You don’t have to. I want to follow it through.’

It surprised Alain too. After a moment he smiled and told Vic, ‘How is it that only this kid knows the right thing to do?’