Death & the City Book Two (3 page)

"I have a feeling that's not my department," I tell them. "You can't catch pillow talk by text, or phone monitoring. You've got to be in the room close enough to hear it. And no lesbian believes I'm even curious in trying out being a lesbian. To a hard-core lesbian, I might as well be a man, for all the chemistry they sense from me. I don't think she even glanced my way while I was there. Don't get me started on how men perceive me, though. It's the same, only in reverse. To me, most men might as well be lesbians too."

"What would you suggest?"

"Catch her admitting to whatever it is," I reply. "Can give you the number of a French lesbian doorman. Sounds like she's short of dates right now. If you can't get her close to Rodriguez, you could get her to chat up Lucinda Wiley at The Plaza, see if she spills any beans."

"Nothing you can tell us from today?"

I recall the conversation with Martha, and what I read of Eudora Rodriguez's body language at the time. There had been a definite shifting in her seating position around halfway through what Martha was saying, about new regulatory divisions for people concerned with Craft.

"I think she might dabble in something," I concede, and chuckle as I add a joke. "Try Boogling
'Dark Dimensions'
. But I couldn't tell you in what capacity - whether she follows a cult, has a specific perversion, or invests in something. Maybe something invests in her - in her business."

"Okay," they say. "Give us the lesbian doorman's number. We'll take it from there."

And there you have it. Twenty minutes of watching someone in a small room, and they've got all they need, to kick-start things. Even though, technically, all they've got is what I think of as my opinions. But it does make the difference. It's one of those things that they consider proves, you can be texting, emailing, telephoning, or writing letters back and forth, and know nothing real about the person for months, or even years at a time. Or be monitoring a potential target's correspondence, and find nothing of use. But like a good police interrogation team, get a stranger in a room in front of you, and suddenly everything becomes clear. Door staff have to learn to read people and situations quickly, as they happen in front of them. So perhaps some of us ARE better qualified, than your average self-respecting couch potato lounge surfer, to do a cold profiling like this one. I'd like to see Axwel or Trebor from work do a similar subject profiling, going by the way they give elaborately helpful descriptions on their incident reports.

It leaves me feeling mentally hyper, as my brain continues analysing afterwards. The caffeine content in the Green Angel cocktail probably supplemented that. Or I could be just HOPING it's the caffeine. And not some dormant part of my personality waking up, stretching, cracking its metaphorical knuckles, and on the lookout for new business…

Suddenly the portion of my brain that's driving intervenes on that thought, and slams on the brakes, just as a terrified deer which had been skittering towards me in the middle of the road leaps at an awkward sideways angle. Miraculously it clears the bonnet, recovers control of its stilt-like legs on the far side, and bolts into the forest, honking and braying. I've never heard them call before, except passing through the verderer's paddock in rutting season.

The road ahead doesn't look right, and through the fan running in the car I get a definite alien smell, consistent with burning of mixed materials - mineral, vegetable - and animal.

I press Ringback on my phone.

"Can you see where I am right now?" I ask head office, as they pick up.

"Cloud cover and forest canopy is a bit dense but we've got you on GPS," they reply. "What's up?"

"Looks like an RTA about a hundred yards ahead," I report. "You didn't put a camera in the car or anything useful like that yet?"

"No, it's kind of lame of us, but we do have to get certain permits for that, to license you as an official CCTV vehicle," they admit, and for the first time I hear head office sounding a little sheepish. "Switch to camera phone and get closer if you can. We'll close either end of the road."

I put the car back in gear and crawl forwards until the road surface changes, coated in what looks like soot. I don't trust the car not to slide on it, and stop, getting out. The alien burning smell hits me, out of place in the tranquil forest setting.

"Got a coating on the road, some of it powder, some of it crust with bubbles in," I tell them, switching to camera phone and Speaker, so that I can film close-up and talk at the same time. "Bad smell as well. Metallic and organic. Got shrapnel." I kick a few twisted bits of metal with my toe, then look up and around. "Trees on either side are shredded and a bit scorched. Bare earth in the verges, like the turf was blasted off." I move closer to the nearest tree to film it. "Got shreds of burnt hair or fur caught in the jagged trees." I look down at a huge tree stump - where a large monolith had been felled for growing too close to the road, deterring a hurricane incident risk. "Interesting sunray scoring marks across the top of this stump. Might indicate direction of blast. Something was obliterated, right here in the middle of the road."

I hear background talk at head office's end, and someone says the phrase:
'Failed road test'
.

"Yeah, we're doing a back trace on vehicles on this road now," they tell me. "You came this way earlier, see anything unusual?"

"No, just the regular traffic." I scuff the soot in the road. "Ah. I've got melted rubber tread on this spot. I think it was here."

I film the faint tyre marks in the soot. The tread pattern is clear - meaning the vehicle was stationary when it detonated. I look for other skid marks to indicate a collision, but there's nothing visible that I can see, except for hoof marks of deer that have crossed since, and some superficial tyre marks, where traffic has since passed over it without noticing.

"Yeah, we've just had it confirmed. A six-month-ago-stolen slate grey FTO was on this road, in the last half an hour to forty minutes, and never completed the journey," they report. "Wouldn't have taken it as significant earlier - could have been a farm resident, or someone on a picnic or visit. Looks like it originated today from one of the breaker's yards - one of the several that were on the Honda list."

"You think it's possible they kitted out more than one car?" I ask, looking around at the damage caused by the blast. When I squint, I can make out a hemispherical zone of destruction. On a hunch, I look down again at the smashed tarmac, close to the tyre tread marks, and kick it around a bit, unearthing shreds of metal. "Might be some casings or rounds deeper in this tarmac. I reckon War In A Box could do this, if it misfired."

"Good call. That could be you, plated all over those trees," they say, in their usual observationally dry tone, as I grind my toes in, finding shiny melted lumps, of what could be impacted bullets. "We've cleared the road for uniform and Special Unit. We'll have to bring the verderers in to look for the non-human casualties. Stay put until uniform get there."

"No problem," I say, and hang up. "I'll get a head start on finding the casualties, then."

I move my car onto the verge in the undamaged stretch of road, reach around behind the passenger seat until I find my old rucksack, and get back out of the car.

Thirty-five millimetre film. No chance of anyone being able to download what I can see this way. Birds with bullet holes through them, or heads and wings shot off. I finish off any small woodland survivors with my air pistol as I do a fairy-step search of the perimeter of the damage. It was unlikely any of them would be able to provide helpful information by staying alive and suffering for it.

The destruction is inconsistent - not like a bomb-blast or fire damage. It's as if the vehicle and whatever was in it either exploded or imploded, and any fireball was limited to the tarmac and overhanging trees. While what caused the peripheral damage beyond that was flying shrapnel, as it annihilated itself. With my penknife I dig a few silver lumps out of tree-trunks, bark splintered and hanging off damply, still with the green of spring growth holding the shreds together. Very shiny for shot, if that's what it is. Like the bullets in the clip borrowed from Sin Street. Bullets with added bling factor.

I'm aware that I'm less objective, as my old self. Finding nothing in the way of getting on with what I'm doing. Less internal commentary, clouding my observation and details that I'm mentally recording, as well as with the old Nikon. It's a strange sort of primal instinct more than a personality. Where it originates from, there's no head office, no nightclubs, no friends, no co-workers, no CCTV, no satellite, and no internet. Just me. Recording things, as I see them. If it looks out of place. Or useful.

I wonder if I climbed up one of these trees, I'd find anything more interesting.

Then a whimpering, groaning sound at ear level distracts me, to my left, and I continue my footstep search in the direction of the source.

At least the stag was probably killed outright, its head embedded by the antlers in a tree-trunk, the rest of it probably decorating the sky or being sucked into aircraft engines by now. So the stag was the luckier of the two. The man in the brown denim jacket with his trousers down, facing the tree and pinned to it by the stag's head, not so lucky.

He's alive, and as I get closer, maybe not too much the worse for wear, as I switch camera for First Aid kit and survey the damage. Looks like a broken nose, where he head-butted the tree. The two closest antlers embedded in the wood either side of his neck gave him a nasty graze rather than a jugular laceration. Another deer spear has pierced his right shoulder, hopefully not too deep, and on the far side, one is through his sleeve, and has either trapped or badly punctured his upper left arm. However he's attached, it's pretty effectively.

He has a few bullet holes lower down, I notice from his bare legs. Whatever sprayed these woods was like the garden sprinkler of firearms.

I start with cleaning up his face, where he's managed to get it at a slight angle pressed against the bark. If I clear his nose and mouth, I can get him to talk, or at least scream something useful.

"Buddy," I say to him, now the non-latex gloves are on, and I'm back in door supervisor role. "Can you talk? Do you know where you are?"

"I'm pinned to this tree with something," he says, and I catch the blood as it sputters with the paper towel from my kit. He spits a bit more out. "I think a tree fell on me. There was a huge bang and a crash. I only hopped out of the car for a piss."

"Yeah, I can see that," I reassure him. "How's everything down there, all good I hope?"

"I can still feel my hands and my hands can still feel my knob, so as long as my hands are in the right place I hope everything else is," he reports, miserably. "Please say it is."

"Looks like your hands are still on your crotch, so if that's where you last had it, you could be lucky," I tell him. "You're quite bloody, and you've got some puncture wounds. I've called Emergency Services so you shouldn't have to wait long."

With my free hand out of his line of sight, I'm texting head office. MALE IC1 CASUALTY IMPALED ONTO TREE, CONSCIOUS & TALKING, COULD BE DRIVER NEEDS MED ATTENTION
ASAP
.

"What's your name?" I ask him. "I'm Lara, by the way."

"Lara. Thanks for stopping and helping me." He tries to sniff as my cleaning frees blood that isn't dried yet. "I'm Damon. Is my car all right? My legs are fucking caning me, I wish I could sit down."

"I think your car was the bang you heard," I say, concentrating on cleaning him up thoroughly, and keeping information and my own curiosity suitably bland. "Maybe had a dodgy wire in it or something."

"Shit," he mutters. "I'm lucky to be alive."

"Yeah. I'm sure you'll be fine." I hear a quiet squeak of brakes behind me, and look over my shoulder to see the outline of Special Unit's van on the road. I hope they don't have orders which would turn me into an immediate liar. "Did you have a bag or anything with you, any valuables? You don't want to have to come back here in the dark later looking for your wallet."

"I don't think I'll be going anywhere for a while," he says wryly. "Just keys and wallet in my jeans - they might have fallen out on the floor here, considering where my pants are. Ow. I hope they bring morphine."

"They usually bring everything." I try to ignore the picture of Adam Grayson that appears in my head, turning up under the guise of head office's new hit-man nemesis. I replace it with a happier mental image of fairies and unicorns from woodland folk Heaven congregating to lead the deceased souls of nature to wildlife nirvana. At least, I try, but end up with one very cross imaginary fairy ranting that his fairy ring toadstools have been destroyed, stamping and kicking up pine needles and leaves, then trying to set fire to Damon's trousers in piqued fairy arson. So I look round for Special Unit instead, as much for them to rescue me from my stressed-out overstretched intellectual capacity under the circumstances, as for Damon to get some professional help. "Looks like your wallet down here, yeah." I bend down and retrieve it, glad that Arson Fairy at least pointed in the right direction. The wallet flops open easily to show his I.D. and that Damon's not lying about his name, and the FTO immobilizer key is underneath it, on a short plain keychain weighted only with a couple of old randomly-sized grubby Imperial sockets from a tool set - very ambiguous and masculine, saying nothing about who he is, except that he fiddles with cars. I tuck them into his jacket pocket, which I can reach without causing him any further discomfort.