Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes (20 page)

The woman held out the small bag. The ambassador took it.

“This deal between Britain and America isn’t really about trade, not in the sense everyone understands it,” the ambassador said. “And it’s certainly not about food. I know that the inconveniences of rationing focuses minds on the canned fish, beef, powdered milk, and all the rest that’s sent overseas, but we barely need it now. Even when the ships first crossed the ocean it wasn’t food for which we were most grateful. It was the antibiotics. Within a few years we’ll be shipping food to you. In return Britain will provide the pharmaceuticals, and precision tools, and then the circuitry. It’s why your universities are expanding. They’re preparing for the day when there’s no need for tens of thousands of coalminers, and for when farms once again number their employees in tens not hundreds.”

“The more things change, the more they stay the same, yes?” Mitchell said.

“It was ever thus,” Perez agreed. “At some point, and I don’t know when, we were at a crossroads. Perhaps it was back in Maine when I held that crew hostage, or perhaps it was when your Prime Minister decided to fill the ships with supplies rather than soldiers. Perhaps it was later, perhaps it was sooner, but at that crossroads we had a choice. We could regress to some twisted parody of the Victorian Wild West, with empires and despots. Or we could remember all that we’d collectively learned from history and try not to repeat those same mistakes. You see, as much as the food and medicines saved lives, it was the knowledge that we weren’t alone that allowed us to reunify so quickly, and relatively peacefully. There were battles, certainly, but there have been no wars because reunification doesn’t mean the strong taking over the weak. It’s a return to law, order, and the comforts that many still remember. Knowledge, that’s the most powerful force in this world. Knowledge that we weren’t alone then and aren’t alone now. That is the purpose of this ceremony, the broadcast, and the trade deal. That being said,” he added, holding out the bag to the sergeant, “people do appreciate the tangible, and there are some things that you can’t grow in this climate.”

Mitchell took the bag. “Coffee beans?” he asked, looking inside.

“From Puerto Rico. A thank you for your work over the last few days. Not just that business with my assistant, but for exposing that counterfeiting ring.”

“You know about that?” Ruth asked.

“Of course. You can’t have a trade deal without money backing it. Your banknotes are used in the U.S. did you know that? People have faith in your currency and had you not caught the counterfeiters that faith would have been destroyed. Perhaps the trade deal would have gone with it. These are fragile times, but when has civilisation ever not been balanced on a knife’s edge? Oil from America, coffee from the Caribbean, chemicals from Britain. The world turns, and in five years we’ll be back in the air. In ten, we’ll have satellites in orbit again.”

“Those are lofty goals,” Mitchell said.

“Is it worth having any other kind? But as I said, I wanted to say thank you. Enjoy the coffee. Think of it as a taste of what’s to come.”

“What was that about?” Ruth asked after the ambassador had left.

“That was what we call a stump speech,” Mitchell said. “I think he was practicing. If he isn’t planning to run for the presidency, I’ll be surprised. Let me take those.” He took the voter registration forms that the ambassador had handed to her. Ruth didn’t try to stop him.

“I meant the stuff about you helping him,” she said. “The assistant. The thank you.”

“Oh, that, yes. There was an incident the day before you joined us, cadet,” Mitchell said. “At about the same time as Riley was taking a swim in the sea, I was walking along the coast. It was more or less on the same route I take every night. I saw a group of three men acting suspiciously. I confronted them. One ran. I’d say he was around thirty, maybe a bit older. He had a white streak in his brown hair that didn’t quite cover where half his ear was missing. I don’t know what happened to him, but one of the others dived to the ground, and the third man shot at me. I returned fire, killing him. I caught and arrested the man who took cover. He is Lucas Fairmont, and he was the assistant to the ambassador. On his person was a list of names and addresses that corresponded, as you heard, to the rightful owners of the oil fields they are about to open up. Personally… well, the specifics of this trade deal are of no interest to me. I wanted to check the bullet we found in Mr Anderson against the guns I found on the man I killed.”

“You think the two crimes are connected?” Ruth asked.

“I was worried that they were, but now I fear they are not,” Mitchell said. “I had the bullet tested yesterday, and it doesn’t match either weapon.”

“And that’s bad?” she asked.

“It means we’ll see more crimes like these,” Mitchell said. “After twenty years, people see power as once again worth killing for. There will be more murder, more innocent lives ruined. Progress!” He walked back into the cabin. “Forget satellites,” he shouted from inside, “what about a decent criminal database? But if I get a fridge in my room before the decade is out, I’ll be impressed.” There was the sound of cupboard doors slamming one after the other. Then he came out again.

“You two continue training,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Where are you going?” Riley asked.

“To find something I can grind these coffee beans with.”

Chapter 11

The Ruins of Southampton

22
nd
September

“Don’t close the door,” Mitchell said as Ruth walked into the cabin. “We’ve got our first official case, a double murder in Southampton.”

“Southampton? Does anyone live there?” Ruth asked.

“Two less people do now,” Mitchell replied, almost with enthusiasm, as he pushed past her.

Riley, carrying the crime-kit, followed. “I’ve got it,” she said as Ruth moved to take the kit from her. “Did you deliver the report to the Naval Office?”

“They were surprised to see me,” Ruth said. She’d finished going through the accounts of the fight at the dock, had written an official response, and taken it to the Naval Office that morning. “But they took it.”

“And will probably ignore it,” Riley said.

“I’m not going to let them,” Ruth said. “I added a request to interview each sailor.”

“Really? Why?” Riley asked.

“As I see it, we’re owed four crates of oranges,” she said.

“Now she’s sounding like a copper,” Mitchell said. “But that’s a battle you won’t be able to fight until the ship comes in to dock. We’ve got a murder to solve. There’s a train leaving for Kent in twenty minutes, and I’d like to catch it.”

“Double homicide. Discovered by scavenger. Redbridge. Southampton,” Ruth read as the train rattled east. She turned the note over. “That’s not much to go on.”

“You forgot that you have who the note came from,” Mitchell said.

“It was sent at nine a.m. from the Ministry of Resettlement. Who are they?” Ruth asked.

“What do you know about scavenging?” Mitchell asked.

“You need a licence,” Ruth said, remembering her and Riley’s encounter with the cobbler a few days previously. “And ninety-percent of what you get is taxed unless you give it to the National Store.”

“Broadly speaking, yes. Ninety-percent is taxed, and you can pay that tax in money or by selling the goods to the National Store, in which case the tax is waved. The amount the government pays for the goods is a paltry sum which is why the other ten-percent is so important. Usually that’s made up of items found to order. Clothing in a particular size, books, specific items of crockery for those who can afford a matching set, and so on. Or it’s luxury items like wine, spirits, real tea, spices, and other old-world goods that have survived the last twenty years. You can’t sell those to a shop without the tax receipt, and they can’t sell them on without a copy of the same receipt. Of course, they do, because there’s no way of knowing whether the bottle of whisky on the receipt is the one on the shelf or the one that was sold the day before. The idea isn’t to stop scavenging, or even to raise taxes, but to make looting less appealing than a life of farming or mining. There are exceptions and exemptions, of course, and those people who do make a living from scavenging depend on them. Books from Hay-on-Wye, for instance, or collecting research papers from Oxford. But you could look at this in another way. Scavengers spend their time clearing abandoned houses of anything valuable that the weather would otherwise ruin before people want to live there again. By putting it all into the National Store there’s no need to divert resources into making new pots and pans for another generation. As to the sale of silk and wine and all the rest, I’m told that a luxury goods market is vital to the economy. Personally, I have my doubts.”

“Southampton’s different,” Riley said.

“It is,” Mitchell said. “It was hit by a far more powerful bomb than the one that devastated Bournemouth. It’s a city of the dead that no one had time to bury.”

“Then these scavengers must have a licence,” Ruth said. “Because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have reported the crime.”

“I suspect they have something, but not a licence,” Mitchell said.

Ruth waited for him to go on. He didn’t. From his expression he was waiting for her to ask. Instead, she turned her attention to the window, watching the trees fly past as the train rumbled through the New Forest.

“We get out here,” Mitchell said, as the train slowed, and then came to a halt. “This is Redbridge, the edge of Southampton, and the point where the train heads north, leaving the coast behind.”

“It’s a town?” Ruth asked, wondering why she’d never heard of it.

“It was an outpost and now it’s a depot,” Mitchell said. “A place for the train to take on water.”

“Look up,” Riley said.

Ruth did. There was a hot air balloon floating lazily above them.

“It keeps watch,” Riley said.

“For bandits?” Ruth asked.

“Pirates,” Mitchell said. “We’ve been strengthening the defences around Kent, so it won’t be long before they try further up the coast. Come on.”

The depot looked like an armed camp. It was a small old-world train station, ringed by a wall, behind which the top of an even higher fence was visible. That fence carried on for nearly a mile down the tracks, ending in… she squinted. “Are those shipping containers?”

“It was a port city, once,” Mitchell said.

They went through the station and into a car park. A trio of Marines were playing dice against a wall, and a woman in railway green argued with a man over something to do with the price of duck. Mitchell led them towards a man standing on his own, near the guarded gate. At first glance he looked like one of those people who spent their lives wandering the country, homeless and alone. He was dressed in ragged leather and mismatched swatches of cloth, a trio of knives at his belt, and battered white trainers on his feet. But the face under the greasy hat was scrubbed if not exactly clean, so were his hands. Ruth guessed he was no older than thirty-five, too young to be one of those old-timers who’d never adjusted to the new world. Though he was shifting from foot to foot in nervous agitation, he didn’t seem afraid.

“You’re waiting for us?” Mitchell asked, approaching the man.

“Are you police?” the man asked.

“Don’t the uniforms give us away?” Mitchell replied

“Did you come about the murder?” the man asked.

“Will you take us there?” Mitchell replied.

The man weighed that up for a moment before nodding.

Ruth threw a quizzical look at Riley. The constable shook her head.

The gate was opened, and they went outside. There was a cart, pulled by a team of hardy ponies, being tended to by a boy of around ten.

“Is this your son?” Mitchell asked.

“Aren’t all children of the tribe my sons and daughters?” the man replied.

Everything was a question, that was clear, and this person was… weird, Ruth decided.

It was a short journey, made in silence, though that was filled by the smell. The cart was filthy, held together by grease as much as by wire and bolt. The padding on the seats was of uncured leather, and Ruth didn’t want to even think what they were stuffed with. The ponies, however, were sleek and well groomed.

After five minutes, they came to a halt outside an abandoned school at the top of a curving avenue. As Ruth jumped down from the cart, she saw the canopy of the balloon hovering overhead, barely a mile away. They could have walked, she thought, but guessed the cart ride was somehow symbolic because a large group waited for them outside the school. About fifty adults, she thought. Inside the building she could make out the faces of children, unwashed and unkempt. The cart’s driver went over to the group, as the boy unhitched the ponies.

“What’s going on?” Ruth asked.

“More or less what I expected,” Mitchell said, which was no more illuminating than the back and forth questioning had been.

Mitchell approached a woman at the centre of the group. She wasn’t the oldest there, though she was at least fifty, but she was obviously in charge.

“My name is Mitchell. I am police. I am here about the two bodies,” he said.

The woman looked from him, to Riley, to Ruth, and then back at Mitchell.

“Are we not here to start a new life?” the woman asked, and with the question the group behind her unstiffened, though the suspicion didn’t leave their eyes.

“I remember you,” Mitchell said.

“Do you?” the woman replied.

“Are you here on resettlement?” Mitchell asked.

“Don’t we all seek shelter at journey’s end?” the woman asked.

“And life is a journey with only one end. I remember you saying that,” Mitchell said. “Who found the bodies?”

Half the group, mostly the younger ones, glanced towards the man who’d driven the cart.

“Who else, but me?” the woman asked.

“Perhaps we could talk?” Mitchell suggested.

The two walked away from the group, and it seemed the conversation moved more freely now that there was no one to overhear.

“Thank you,” Mitchell finally said, and loudly enough for the entire group to hear. “I wish you all well, here in your new home.”

“Sir?” Ruth prompted, as she and Riley followed the sergeant down the avenue.

“You’ve not heard of resettlement, have you?” he asked.

“They’re bandits,” Riley said. “Or they were.”

“Really?” Ruth asked.

“From the north,” Mitchell said. “It’s cheaper to offer them land and hope they’ll assimilate than to send the Marines in to kill them. They’ve been given these houses, that school, and what’s left of an old rugby club to turn into fields. But primarily they’re here to sort through the old container port that’s on the other side of the railway station.”

“Do they always speak in questions?”

“Yeah, that’s a new thing,” Mitchell said. “It’s understandable, I suppose. Civilisation abandoned them, so they had to come up with their own customs. A game taught to children becomes the habit of adults swiftly enough.”

“And the bodies?” Riley asked.

“There are two of them, in a house down here,” Mitchell said. “This group arrived yesterday evening. The bodies were found when they began surveying their new home this morning. It was a few hours before dawn, and she couldn’t give me a more precise time than that. This house here, I think.” He stopped in front of a three-storey terrace. “The front door’s missing. Do you see the glass? The windows were blown in. Riley, you take downstairs. Cadet, you’re with me. They said the bodies were upstairs.” He stepped inside. “I think we can say…” He paused, peered at the sodden, rotten mess of a carpet lining the stairs. “Careful on this. Yes, I think we can say these bodies arrived here before last night. They would have noticed people walking around their territory.”

The stairs creaked as Ruth put her weight on one. She shifted her foot to the edge.

“And they call themselves a tribe?” she asked.

“They felt abandoned,” Mitchell said. “To survive, we all did things that we wish we could forget. Some did things they can’t live with. Those people were alone a lot longer than most and had to find a way of coping with the guilt. Creating their own mythology was—” He stopped speaking as he reached the open doorway to an upstairs room at the front of the house. “Riley!” he yelled.

Ruth tried to see past Mitchell, but he held out a hand to stop her. The constable came running up the stairs, pushed past Ruth, and came to a stop in the doorway. She said nothing, just shook her head. Finally, Mitchell allowed Ruth to step forward and see for herself.

The room was small, crowded with furniture, and filled with the smell of damp edged with the increasingly familiar coppery tones of blood. On a sofa facing the window was the body of a man she didn’t recognise, a revolver still held in his right hand. In an armchair against the far wall was the body of one she did.

“That’s Marcus Clipton,” she said.

“It is,” Mitchell said. He carefully knelt down and peered at the floor. Then he turned his head to look towards the two bodies. “Nothing but scuffmarks. No discernable footprints. Riley?”

The constable stepped lightly over to the bodies. “Recent,” she said. “A day. Maybe two. No longer. Clipton’s been shot from close range. Single gunshot wound to the chest.” She looked closer. “Through and through. The bullet’s lodged somewhere in the chair. The other man was stabbed. The knife is still present. From the angle, it was an underarm blow, entering just below the rib cage. There’s a revolver still in that man’s right hand.”

Mitchell looked at the two bodies, tilting his head left and right.

“Sir, do you think—” Ruth began.

“No more questions, cadet. Not now,” the sergeant interrupted. “Get out some evidence bags.”

He stepped into the centre of the room, turning a full, slow circle, his eyes on the floor. He turned around again, this time looking at the ceiling. Then he knelt down. Ruth followed his gaze, but couldn’t tell what he was looking for.

“It appears obvious what’s happened,” Mitchell said. “Clipton came here to kill this man. The man was expecting it. He was stabbed, but shot Clipton before he died, and they both collapsed into the chairs as they breathed their last. One more loose end tied up. Wonderful. That just leaves the identity of this man.” He turned another slow circle. “Yes. Annoying, too,” he added, a little more loudly than Ruth thought was necessary, “since we’re not allowed to investigate Clipton’s murder. We’ll bag the evidence though, don’t want to leave it where one of those scavengers might purloin it.”