Crimes of the Grey Detective

Chapter Five + Epilogue

Chapter Five

The odd thing about drinking in space was that you still had to use the Orbital equivalent of Sippy cups. It took the right balance of atmospheric pressure, station trajectory alignment, and custom-fitted gravity generators. No station could manage to recreate more than 92% of Earth’s gravity. Now 92% was perfectly fair for most things, Dickens had come to accept, but his drink never seemed to flow quite right. There was always the slightest feeling that his bargain whiskey (four times as expensive as the finest blend found on Earth), wanted to spill over the rim of his glass or crawl along his cheek of its own accord. It was a subtle irritation at ninety percent. It was an abominable mess when the stars aligned to bring a station down to eighty.

As Dickens sat on a lawn chair in Earlander’s impeccably maintained garden, he watched the stars, and tried not to get too philosophical about the moment. But, inevitably, give man a sip and he will smack his lips. Give man a dram and he will drink. Give that bloody peasant a bottle of bargain whiskey to prop against the leg of a deck chair as he looked out at the blue eye of the Earth, and, well… he’d start to sprout nonsense like, “How did I get here?”

Dickens frowned at the slight slur in his voice.

Of course, he knew exactly how he’d gotten here. His parents had met and at some point they’d decided it was a good idea to capitalise on one of their three most basic instincts – certainly the most pleasurable one. Sometime after a good bout of practice, he’d been conceived; first as an idea, then a seed, and finally something resembling a pink potato in human form (his mother had cuffed him roundly about the ears the only other time he had referred to his aunt’s baby as such). He’d learned to walk, to talk, and then to talk back. He’d made friends, taken beatings, and, when he was big enough himself, given them back with interest.

He’d learned he liked to watch people, to learn about them, to ask questions of why they did the things they did, to look at the great ugly monster that loomed behind their backs and pushed them forward. He hated looking at his own great ugly monster; partly because he didn’t want to know its face, partly because he didn’t think it existed. He’d always sort of… coasted into incredible circumstances. He’d never been outstanding at much – though not for lack of trying – but one thing he knew was people. He knew what he knew and, more importantly, he knew and deeply distrusted what he did not know.

It was people that made great metropolises of stone and glass back on Earth and it was people who had torn them down. It was people who’d said the Sun was put in the sky by some benevolent god who wanted their crops to grow and their leathers to tan, or their rivers to burn and their green lands to waste away into sweeping canvases of desert sand. It was people who’d built rockets to pursue the limits of their own excellence, only to be confronted with an endless, infinite, indifferent universe. And still man had tried to make the most of it.

At some point in human history, they decided that these abstract things called dollars and rupees and rands and pounds needed to be commonly understood to have value. Then those who came up with the idea set about the lucrative business of hoarding as much of it as they could. A few hundred years later, the first Trillionaire was born.

Then more came.

When the have-nots tore down their empire, they put their empire in space, out of the reach of disenfranchised hands. At some point, that empire needed a few more cops. One got really hung up on petty revenge that he still felt absolutely justified for undertaking. His only regret was that he didn’t spend enough time in jail to take refuge in his justification without the aftertaste of guilt.

And, well, then he found himself here on this lawn, looking through a dome at thousands of stars. All that did was lead him to ask about the how. He had to wonder how he got here when he knew exactly how he got there.

He was here because sometimes things went places and there was nothing you could do but follow them.

Dickens took another sip of whiskey and kept his glazing eyes on the stars. “It’s a pretty s**t view, isn’t it?”

Sera walked up from behind him, the soft grass padding her footsteps.

“I suppose I’ve seen better,” Dickens said. “Though it feels wrong to say that. It feels like there should be an epicness to the stars that spits in the face of human logic on what is and isn’t a good view, because it just always is.”

Sera dragged a second lawn chair to a spot beside his own. “It’s gas emitting heat and light. It’s testament to just how s**t-luck awesome the Big Bang was, but nothing else. It’s like a woman going about her college raves even though she graduated ten years ago.”

“Nothing good in looking back,” Dickens muttered.

“Aye, or looking up.” Sera plopped down into the chair. “Just have a look at these hedges. If Daniels was up here, he wouldn’t have time for the bloody stars. He’d be too busy inspecting the bushes.”

“We’re all born marvelling different things.”

“True again,” Sera said. “I was born with an eye for systems, how they work, when they don’t work, how to break or mend them – everything from machines to bodies. Daniels likes gardens and metal.”

“He seems to have a thing for corpses too.”

“And as for you… well.” Sera looked around the lawn, her blonde bun swaying. “Well, you’re a people person, freakishly so. On what should be the most exciting, most opportune day of your life, here you are, alone, pretending you give a f**k about stars.”

“I needed space to think.”

“Liar.”

“I don’t like getting drunk in front of company.”

“Liar.”

“I’m fuckin’ tired.”

“Better, but you’ve had a month to rest up, a month to itch for the outside again, and a chance to join the bloody Guild, Charlie!”

“I know, I know, and thank you for…” Dickens frowned, and scratched his nose vigorously with a clumsy, whiskey-thickened hand. “And thank you for that, Sera. You were more than a ward these past years. You were a best friend and – more importantly – a reliable partner.”

That wicked smile again, bright as glass. She took up the bottle between them and popped the cork. “You always did have your priorities straight, Charlie. Except for here.”

Dickens looked at Sera again. Her brow had a crease splitting it as she tried not to gag on the bargain whiskey. “Except for here? How do you mean?”

“Well, look at it like this, Charlie, there’s not a single case that’s come across our path as easy as this one. The only complication is what the ramifications of disclosing it to the Force are, and to be honest, that’s for the higher ups in the Guild to manage.”

“He’s not guilty.”

“And you’re sure of this how?” Sera hid most of her anger by taking another crack at the whiskey. “Did his murder weapon tell you as it was boiling bubbles into that poor woman’s veins?”

Dickens winced. His own dislike of Disablers and the power they had on almost every set of Twin Universal Gravity Chips had been born out of the fear that one day, someone with the power and means would turn an evil eye on him and click him to death. That was the best form of law enforcement the Orbital had. He didn’t doubt that somewhere in their seemingly peaceful system – peaceful being relative – there was a device that could target hundreds if not thousands of TUGCs all at once.

One day, a trill would be in a real pissed off state of mind and that would be that. It wouldn’t even have the vitriolic courtesy of a missile, which you could at least see coming from far away to realise what an absolute waste your life had been. It would be five quick pulses, and that was that.

“Why does everyone assume he’s guilty?” Dickens asked.

“You assumed as much yourself until recently.”

“And why is that?” Most of Dickens’ annoyance was pointed at himself.

He shouldn’t have presumed, not until he had known all the facts of the case, but the great irony was that it was something about the overwhelming evidence against Councilman August that eventually convinced Dickens that something was amiss.

“Why’s what?” Sera asked, not yet warming to the bargain whiskey.

“Why did I just assume he was guilty?”

“Natural distrust of figures of power?”

“Partly.”

“Your contrarian nature?”

“Partly.”

“Do you see the pattern here?”

Dickens frowned. “You need three for a pattern.”

“Everything that’s telling you that you don’t have this case buried points to one thing – paranoia.”

“People who know people are naturally paranoid.”

“But we’re not dealing with people here, are we?” Sera seemed to finally be taking a liking to the whiskey. “We’re dealing with cold hard evidence; a system of facts that form the logical conclusion that Councilman Augustus murdered Merida Langard.”

“Yes, but as logical as it all –” Dickens touched his chest. His heart rate exploded as if a hammer had touched it. He had the symptoms of an epiphany, and they all contrived to cut his stomach into a sour, roiling mush. “Sera.”

“Aye?”

“You could have solved this case all on your own.”

“I could have, aye,” she agreed. “But when the Councilman tried to reassure me that he was innocent, I saw it as an opportunity to get you out of jail and then to get you into the Guild if all went well. And it’ll go well, all right. The case might be simple but the scandal alone will make you an astronomical superstar.”

Dickens stared ahead and Sera continued, oblivious.

“The Guild wanted you for your skills already, but the allure of your celebrity will have them salivating over their private sponsorships. It’s a win-win.”

Win-win situations are made, not found. “Sera.”

“Yes, my young ward?” She answered teasingly.

Dickens’ stomach was a ball of bile floating around his insides. “Did you murder Mrs. Langard?”

That wicked smile dropped, replaced with a look of seriousness so rare on Sera’s face that Dickens was surprised it didn’t just pass through like some random twitch of a muscle. No, she was stone-dead serious.

“You’re the best programmer I know,” Dickens said. “Maybe good enough to hijack the signal of another Disabler. Answer me, Sera.”

“You know I’d never lie to you in a million billion years, Charlie, not in a million damn billion.” It was her smile that was the twitch, a small thing that couldn’t bear the weight in her eyes for more than a fleeting second. “I told you that all evidence points to Councilman August murdering Merida Langard.”

“And who made it so that the evidence would point to the Councilman?” Dickens asked, his own serious affect infinitely more at home on his face.

“I did.”

Dickens rubbed his eyes with his thick fingers. “Say that again.”

“You want me to explain why I got you out of jail and set you up for life with the Guild of Inspectors after the Force kicked me out and left you to rot?”

“I want to know why all of that cost the life of another human being.”

“Call her by her name,” Sera said.

“f*****g fine,” Dickens hissed, his blood rising up the thick column of his neck. “I want to know why all of that cost the life of Merida Langard.”

Sera met Dickens’ gaze unflinchingly. “Her maiden name: Marida O’Malley.”

What heat had been bubbling in Dickens’ veins suddenly ran cold. A force seemed to push gently into his back, like the wave of an ocean or a back-stabbing knife felt in a dream. He was suddenly overcome with the compulsion to cry and the much viler, infinitely more sinister urge to throw his fists at the corpse of a dead woman, whose only crime had been to be a secret relative to the first murderer in the Five Orbitals – the man who had somehow brought a gun into Fourth Orbital and shot Dickens’ neighbour point blank in the face.

“She didn’t deserve it, Sera,” he murmured.

“O’Malley did.” There was fire and fear and hatred in Sera’s eyes, and they seemed to look past Dickens to stare directly at the great ugly monster over his shoulder. “He deserved to suffer the only way I knew to make it hurt – for Da, Charlie, for Da. You saw what he did.”

Dickens drew her near and settled his head on her shoulder. They wept together for quite some time, then they went silent, then they drank.

Sean O’Malley had been the first and only man in the Five Orbitals to fashion a gun and because the Trills – having banned firearms – lacked the ballistics to trace it to anyone, there wasn’t much that anyone could do. Not that it would have mattered. Gun steel melted, but plastic could be made unrecognisable, and 3D printers could have their memories erased. Five-year-old children could have their fathers erased from their lives with just the pull of a trigger. The lucky ones found mentor-fathers in neighbours. Most didn’t.

Sera and Dickens were in that boat. There was one thing that brought them closer than anything else and it wasn’t the fact that they had formed a friendship. No, it was more than that. They formed a family. And the neighbour O’Malley shot had been way more than a neighbour to the two ex-Force agents. He was a surrogate father.

That was the real reason they’d gone to court. Some fucker with a gun decided to shoot their father in the face. For what? For f*****g what?

In the end, it didn’t matter nearly as much as proving it. When they couldn’t obtain their, shall we say, aggressive justice, that’s when things got nasty. Sera and Dickens became brother and sister in beating a man to death. Here Sera was, getting the perfect revenge on O’Malley, a man rich enough to win the case no matter how unsurmountable the amount of evidence against him, in the centre of the cosmic seas. This was a way to finish off the line – not only had they removed Sean O’Malley from the equation, they were getting back at him by taking away the only family he had left. That was exactly what he’d done to them, after all.

They had the perfect pincushion to blame it on.

Except for one thing.

“All things considered,” Dickens said, “Councilman August is still innocent.”

“Of what?” Sera wiped the tears from beneath her now puffy eyes. “Adultery aside, you know how it goes, Charlie. Let his case go before a court; they’ll find something ten times worse. August didn’t come from money and he wasn’t allowed into the Five Orbitals on the strength of his diplomacy. When you cost one person their life, it is murder. When you’re part of a conspiracy that costs a million people their livelihood…”

“We’re s**t people,” Dickens said.

“We’re people,” said Sera.

By the time Daniels came padding down the lawn, the bottle of bargain whiskey was empty. The old man whistled; there was a vitality to him that had not been there this morning. What scared Dickens was that he felt it inside himself too.

“Ma’s Christ,” said Daniels, “would you look at those hedges. Oi, you two, fuckin’ murder’s being investigated. What the hell are you doing out here?”

Dickens and Sera got to their feet at the same time. Though Dickens was the sturdier upright, Sera was quicker to find a smile for the old man.

“Took a break for a liquid lunch. Sorry, forgot to call ya’.” She said.

“’Course you did,” Daniels said, eyeing the bottle with a touch of regret.

Dickens settled a hand over his TUGC and only in that moment did he notice that the pattern he used when stroking those two ribs was some abridged version of the Catholic Cross.

“On the bright side,” Dickens said, unable to break the pattern that had calcified over the last twenty years, “I finally know who murdered Merida Langard.”

EPILOGUE

“We welcome you, Sir Agent Dickens Charles, as an acolyte to the Guild of Inspectors.”