Soul Food

by Gareth Lewis

  'Stone's records?' he asks with a creditable attempt at honest confusion.

  'Yes. You know. His blackmail stash.'

  He really doesn't want to buy into this. Can't say I blame him.

  'As I sat there watching Stone die, I couldn't help thinking that he really wasn't the sentimental type. So why would he keep the bullets they dug out of him as a souvenir? Such an odd looking one too. Hardly going to fit in a gun.'

  Realisation dawns, and he sits back down.

  'But unscrew it, and it plugs into a computer. Holds all kind of interesting things.'

  He glares at me for reviving the horror that's haunted him for years.

  'Things like a rookie who shot another cop by mistake. Stone convinced him to cover it up in the confusion, took the suspicion on himself. And got shot anyway. The rookie didn't realise Stone only wanted him in his pocket. But by that point it'd be too late to step forward. Because covering it up was a crime.' And the rookie was in a doubly traumatised state after seeing the thing he's obviously refused to believe. He'd have been easy to manipulate.

  'What do you want?' asks Sinclair. A flicker of resentful hope flashes in his eyes. 'If you intended to hand the database over in exchange for leniency, you'd be talking to someone else. So, what? Are you taking Stone's place?'

  'No. I might turn over most of it at some point. For now, it might help me. But not Jake. You, on the other hand, can. What do I want? I want to do my job. To protect and serve. Handing it over may let me keep my job. But there are more certain ways, don't you think?'

  'Maybe. But what then? You hold this over me forever. Maybe I'm tired of this.'

  'I'd hope so. Otherwise you'd be no use to me. I want you to do your job. Be a proper cop. Or a proper IA cop, anyway. Give me a chance to do the same. This information will give me the opportunity to make some big arrests, while you help file off any rough edges in my approach. And you'll see Jake gets the help he needs.'

  He's not happy, but I doubt he has been for a long while. And he no longer has to target potential recruits for Stone. He'll get used to it.

  And I'll keep my job. Which is just as well, because it's all I am. All I want to be. And I suppose I'll try harder to stick to the laws, to make his job easier.

  Will I encourage fewer shootouts, now I know what comes after this life?

  I don't know. And I'm not sure I do know what comes next.

  Or whether I'm broken like everyone else who's seen these things. If the word broken is even relevant. Maybe we're all broken. Laced with fractures from the pressure of life all around us.

  Nice metaphor. But does the word broken mean the same in terms of the mind as it does for physical things, or is it simply a convenient play on words to help us think we understand?

  Angel, demon, soul.

  They're just words. Words Marcy and her friends used to try to explain things they never fully could. Words to which we've attributed meaning from tales in which we've tried to explain things we don't fully understand.

  We treat them like we know what they are, like we know what comes after this life. But we don't.

  Is the soul actually a part of me? I'm not sure. And I have no intention of living my life according to how I think things might go afterwards. I won't spend the life I know I have preparing for one that may never come.

  I can't live that way.

  THE END

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  Other titles by Gareth Lewis:

  Allegiances

  Blade Sworn

  Coral Throne

  Glyphmaster

  Glyphpunk

  Glyphwar

  Grey Engines

  Grey Enigmas

  Monstrum Ex Machina

  Shadows of the Heavens

  Song of Thunder

  Stoneweaver

  Tales of the Thief-City

  The Monster in the Mirror

  The Sin of Hope

  To Hunt Monsters