Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes

by Tayell, Frank

  Chapter 10

  Homicide

  21st September

  The next morning, Maggie said nothing as Ruth got ready for work, though her disapproving expression spoke volumes. When she got to the cabin in the yard of Police House, Ruth found Riley there, alone, her head buried in a book.

  “I’m sorry about your clothes,” Ruth said. “My mother tried to wash them, but they were ruined.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Riley replied.

  “Where’s the sergeant?”

  “Mister Mitchell has been summoned,” she said.

  “By whom?” Ruth asked.

  “The Home Secretary.”

  “To answer questions about the other night?” Ruth asked.

  “Possibly. We’ll find out soon.” Riley returned her attention to her novel. It was a different one from before. The cover was illustrated with a soaring tower almost lost amidst a tempestuous sea. Ruth sat down at her desk and stared at the pile of reports from the fight at the docks. It seemed surreal to have to deal with something so mundane as a dockside brawl. She picked up the top sheet and began reading.

  “Don’t bother,” Riley said.

  Ruth looked over at her. The novel had been lowered.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because it’s a con,” Riley said.

  “Do you mean the paperwork?” Ruth asked. “Was it a joke, like the police sign?”

  “I mean the fight,” Riley said. “The oranges were stolen by the crew. The fight was staged to cover it up. Each person will blame someone different, knowing that unless there are at least two corroborating accounts, no one can be charged. That means the matter gets passed back to their ship’s captain, who will be in on the theft. We know it, they know we know it, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “So why did you jump in the sea?” Ruth asked.

  “Because I can’t remember what a real orange tastes like,” she said. She paused and seemed to be weighing up what, and how much, to say. “When Mister Mitchell… When we first met…” She stopped. “He rescued me. I was ten. There was a fight. A battle. Afterwards, there was a storm. Enough lightning and wind to destroy the world, or that’s how I remember it. We hid in a house, a large one, in the middle of the New Forest. In the cellar there was a crate of drinks. The label said they were made with real oranges.” She took another breath and then seemed to think better of saying any more. “I don’t remember ever having eaten a real orange,” she finished. “He said he took you apple picking?”

  “The sergeant? Yes.”

  “He’s a good man, but he’s not very good with people,” Riley said. “He wants to believe the best of them, but he’s seen too much of the worst. He’s conflicted, carrying a burden of guilt that weighs him down. He knows he’s not as intelligent as he needs to be, so he tries twice as hard to compensate. Sometimes he gets it wrong. Did he say you did the right thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. It’s true. It was self-defence. Don’t ever hesitate to do the same thing again.”

  Ruth nodded. She looked at the report in her hand. “I think I’ll finish these. I mean, it can’t hurt, right?”

  “Outside,” Riley said, closing her book.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You grew up alone, right? You were home schooled. Before last night were you ever in a fight?”

  “At the academy,” Ruth said. “In training.”

  “That doesn’t count. They teach you how to hold a gun, and enough maths so you can count how many shots you’ve fired. It’s a school, not a place that prepares you for this job.” Riley walked over to the door. Ruth reluctantly followed.

  Riley took off her jacket and hung it over the metal railings by the rusting ramp.

  “Take off your jacket,” the constable said.

  “Did you learn to fight at the academy?” Ruth asked.

  “No. There wasn’t one when I started in the police. And your belt.”

  “Who taught you?” Ruth asked, hanging the belt with its revolver and truncheon next to the jacket.

  “No more stalling. Come at me.”

  “What?”

  “Attack me,” Riley said.

  Ruth inched forwards, her arms raised, her eyes on Riley’s, watching for movement. She reached out. Riley sidestepped, lightly grabbing Ruth’s wrist, and used the cadet’s own movement to turn, spin, and drop her to the ground.

  “All people are different,” Riley said, “but everyone broadcasts their intentions. Eyes flicker, shoulders tense, fingers flex, a breath is held. Even if they don’t, muscles have to move before a blow can be struck. Watch for it.” She reached out a hand. Ruth took it and let the constable pull her back to her feet.

  “Try again. No,” Riley said, as she grabbed Ruth’s wrist, and this time swept a leg out, scything Ruth to the ground. “Keep your elbows in.” Still holding the cadet’s wrist, Riley pulled Ruth back to her feet. “Again.”

  Ruth took a step back, trying to call to mind everything she’d learned in those Friday afternoon classes. It wasn’t much. Elbows in, hands raised, shoulders hunched, eyes on the constable, she stepped forward. She feinted with her left and sent her right hand straight out, punching air as Riley glided out of the way. The constable’s hands shot out in a two-handed flat-palmed push. Again, Ruth found herself on the ground.

  “Don’t forget your feet,” Riley said as she helped Ruth back up. “Your goal isn’t to fight. You want to take them down quickly and arrest them. Here.” She extended her arm. “Grab my wrist. No, twist it. No, like this. Sweep your leg. Yes, but harder. Try again.”

  It took another two goes before Riley was on the ground.

  “Again,” the constable said.

  By the time Mitchell returned, Ruth was breathless, but strangely exhilarated. Riley had barely broken a sweat.

  “Fighting amongst ourselves?” he said. “That seems like a productive use of our time.”

  “You want a go?” Riley asked.

  “No, please, carry on,” he replied, walking into the cabin, and coming out again with a chair.

  “How did it go?” Riley asked.

  “Interestingly,” Mitchell replied as he sat down. “And not at all how I thought.”

  “You’re not fired?” Riley asked.

  “It’s the opposite. Well, not quite. I’m still a sergeant and you are still a constable. However, Serious Crimes is now an official unit that will specialise in homicide.”

  “Does that mean we’re still investigating Mr Anderson’s death?” Ruth asked.

  “No,” Mitchell said. “Weaver is still in charge of that. The Home Secretary made that clear. The commissioner did manage to get us a small concession. We are to be allowed access to Weaver’s files so that we can consult on the case.”

  “What does that mean?” Riley asked.

  “Politics,” Mitchell said. “The commissioner doesn’t like the Home Secretary, and that feeling is more than mutual. We’ve become a pawn in a game that is, I assume, some preamble to Wallace’s return to the political arena. We did solve the counterfeiting quickly. Or it might be more accurate to say that we brought it to a quick end. As such, the Home Secretary wants us to solve some more murders. Specifically, the kind that can be printed in the newspaper to show she’s the law-and-order candidate.”

  “Do we have a case?” Riley asked.

  “Not yet. Two gets you ten that we have to wait until she finds an appropriate victim. That was a joke, cadet. Have you shown her how to disarm an opponent?”

  Seemingly from nowhere, a knife appeared in Riley’s hand.

  “There are no rules. Remember that,” Mitchell said. “Valour, gallantry, honour, those are words for the sport’s ground. If you can, run. If you can’t, take them down quick, and take them down hard.”

  “I already told her that,” Riley said.

  “Good,” Mitchell said. “If someone comes at you with a knife, don’t try to take the blade away from them, disa
rm them by breaking the arm. Show her how.”

  After another half hour, Ruth was bruised, sweating hard, and actually having fun.

  “Our tax dollars at work,” a man called out. His accent was a rich American, not too dissimilar to Mitchell’s. “Not mine, of course,” the man added.

  Ruth looked around and was rewarded with a swat on the ear from the back of Riley’s hand. She took a couple of steps back and waited until the constable turned to see who approached before she did the same. There was a man and a woman, both very well dressed, she in a black suit, he in light grey. Where the woman’s clothes were almost a uniform, the man’s were old-fashioned and elegant.

  The sergeant stood up, not quite at attention. Riley followed, and Ruth, still breathing hard, tried to copy.

  “No, please,” the man said. “This is an entirely informal visit. You must by Henry Mitchell.”

  “And you are Ambassador Miguel Perez,” Mitchell replied.

  “You know who I am,” the ambassador said, his grin growing even wider as he held out his hand to the sergeant.

  “I do, sir. You’re leading the delegation representing all the different factions calling themselves The United States of America. And you were in Maine when the first ship made contact with the Americas. I could never forget that.” There was an edge to Mitchell’s voice that belied the polite tone. “Cadet, you know how the cruise ships that came aground had mostly American tourists on board?” The question may have been addressed to Ruth, but the sergeant’s eyes stayed locked on the ambassador’s.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “That was the principle reason why, when we started sending ships out, we went to the trouble and risk of sending them across the Atlantic. People wanted to know what had happened to their loved ones. The ship, The Winter Sun, could have made landfall on any stretch of coast. It happened to be near Pinebreak Ferry, where His Excellency was in charge of a community of a few hundred souls. You know what he did?”

  “Um… no, sir,” Ruth said, quickly filling the ominous pause.

  “He held half the crew hostage to guarantee that the ship would return,” Mitchell said. “He took a gamble that when it did, it would return with food and medicine, not soldiers.”

  “And I was right,” Perez said. “And look how it’s worked out. We’ve got this radio broadcast in a couple of days, and a ceremony that will formalise the friendship between nations.”

  “Indeed, sir. How can I help you?”

  “Actually,” the ambassador said. “I’m here to thank you for that help you provided a few days ago. The matter by the shore?”

  “Your assistant, yes, I remember,” Mitchell said. “Has he talked?”

  “Intermittently. I can’t say we’re getting that much use from him. A few names of people back in the U.S. but not much more.”

  “I see. Could I have a list of those names?” Mitchell asked.

  “Of course,” the ambassador said. “But I think the matter has been resolved. The addresses he stole were of oil fields that we’re planning to re-open. Specifically, they gave the names of the legal owners who we know were stranded here during The Blackout. The details next to them were how we were going to prove these individuals, or their heirs, were who they claimed to be. As you probably gathered, my assistant, Fairmont, was selling the information. The gang buying it planned to use it to claim to be the legal owners themselves.”

  “After killing the real owners?” Mitchell asked.

  “Fairmont says no,” Perez said. “They’d told him that they would only assume the identities of people who were dead. I don’t believe it, and I don’t think he does either. We’re changing procedures and sending in teams to collect DNA from those locations. The samples will have to be stored against the time we have the technology to run a comparison. I can’t say whether you’ve saved us any money, but you did save us a great deal of embarrassment. I’m here to thank you for that.”

  Mitchell waved that away. “You’re drilling for oil? You’re bringing back the car to the U.S.?”

  “We already have, in a small way. Refining is where we have a bottleneck, but as we drill more, we build more diesel power plants, and that enables us to refine more oil. Laying railway lines isn’t an effective use of our workforce, nor is having them toil by hand in the fields, not when those fields used to stretch for miles. Give us a few years and we’ll have tractors in them again. A few years after that, we’ll have planes in the sky. All because that ship made landfall in Maine.”

  “Hmm,” Mitchell grunted. “Is any of this gasoline coming to Britain?”

  “It is, as part of the trade deal, though not for a few years.”

  “I can’t imagine it will be much,” Mitchell said.

  “There will be enough. Not for cars, you don’t need them on such a small island. It’s the other uses, plastics and petrochemicals and all the rest, for which we’ll be supplying it to your chemical works. And, of course, enough jet fuel for the planes to make the return trip.”

  “There will be planes? Landing here?” Ruth asked, unable to stop herself.

  “There will,” the ambassador said. “Is that a trace of America in your accent, were you born there?”

  “No, sir,” Ruth said.

  “But you’ve at least one American parent?”

  “Um… yes,” she said.

  “Then you’re eligible to vote in the upcoming election.” He pulled a folded sheaf of papers from his pocket and handed them to Ruth. “And you’ve not registered yet, either, sergeant. I did check. There are three copies there. I’ll send Agent Clarke to collect them in a few days, but as I said, I came here to thank you. Clarke?”

  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.”