Dial D for Deadman: A Space Team Universe Novel (Dan Deadman Space Detective Book 1)

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “About this? About the ensemble?” said Artur, gesturing down at himself.

  A number of responses lined themselves up in Dan’s head. He ignored them, and went back to staring at his drink. “You don’t want to know what I think.”

  “You know yer problem, Deadman?” Artur asked. “One of them, I mean. To be fair, ye’ve got quite a few. Ye know, the face, and being dead and useless, and what have ye.”

  “You’re too kind, Artur.”

  “Ye know what I mean. Ye’re hardly living the feckin’ high life, are ye? Moping about in a dingy strip club.”

  “You brought us here,” Dan pointed out. “I didn’t want to come.”

  “Well then, ye’d best add ‘easily led’ to that list of problems I mentioned, because I didn’t hear ye put up much of a fight,” Artur said, sniffing. “But anyway. Rigid gender boundaries.”

  Dan frowned. “Rigid gender boundaries?”

  “That’s yer problem. One of yer many problems. Ye got all up in arms – pun absolutely intended, by the way – about yer woman’s hand there, and now ye can’t bring yerself to admit that I look feckin’ fabulous.”

  “You look ridiculous,” Dan said.

  “Point proved. Case closed,” said Artur. Two drinks were deposited on the bar in front of him. “Finally!” he cheered, then he scowled up at the bartender. “Where did ye have to go for them, Melmac or something? Sure, I thought I was about to die of thirst.”

  “Ten fifty,” the bartender grunted.

  “Ten fifty!” Artur yelped. “Ten fifty, he says! For two drinks? Have ye no shame at all, ye robbing shoitebag? I’ve a good mind to send them back, so’s I do.”

  The bartender sighed and reached for the glasses. “But I won’t on this occasion,” said Artur, grabbing his glass. He gestured with his head to Dan. “He’s paying.”

  While Dan charged his card, Artur deposited his straw into his glass and sucked. The volume of liquid in the container fell by around half, and Artur let out a belch that would’ve seemed loud for someone ten times his size.

  “Now then, drink up,” he said, gesturing to Dan’s glasses, both of which were still full. “It’s what Neddy would have wanted, rest his soul.”

  “Getting wasted in a back street strip joint?” Dan said. He snorted. “It’s literally the last thing Ned would want.”

  “Aye, fair point, well made. He was an uptight old bastard, wasn’t he? Rest his soul,” said Artur. “But here’s to him, anyway.”

  He sipped another inch of his drink. Dan had no idea how the little guy managed to fit so much liquid inside him, never mind remain sober throughout. Or relatively sober, anyway. His voice was becoming a little louder with each sip, and his squint more pronounced, but those seemed to be the only effects the alcohol was having.

  “What do ye reckon the Tribunal will make of it all?” Artur wondered. “Neddy and his cow of a wife, I mean.”

  “Not much,” said Dan. “People get killed every day. They’ll log it, probably put it down to a break-in, then send it to archives.”

  “The box of severed limbs won’t ring any alarm bells with them, then?”

  Dan’s eyes and mouth became three circles of surprise. “Aw, shizz. My arms! Why didn’t I take the arms?”

  “Because – no offense intended here – yer a useless great eejit.”

  Dan muttered something inaudible, flexed the two working fingers of his female hand a couple of times, then went back to staring at his glass.

  “He didn’t deserve to go like that.”

  “True. True,” Artur agreed. He had turned away from his glass and was now gazing across the busy club, watching a variety of differently-shaped females gyrate seductively on several small stages. “Still, ye shouldn’t blame yerself,” he said. “Holy father, would you look at the legs on that? Sure, I can’t even count them.”

  “I don’t blame myself,” said Dan.

  “Well, good. Glad to hear it,” Artur muttered. His beard bristled and he let out a low whistle. “Now that is a fine figure of a woman. We should come here more often, Deadman. Ye think they do a membership? Maybe, like, a two-for-one deal, or something? Ye’ll have to pay for it. I’m a little short.” He grinned proudly. “See what I did there? Short.”

  “I blame her,” said Dan.

  Artur continued to ogle the multi-legged female for a while, then darted his eyes sideways to Dan. “I don’t see how it can be her fault,” he said. “Sure, she’s just a stripper. I doubt she’s ever clapped eyes on Neddy in her life. Rest his soul.”

  “Not her,” Dan scowled. “Oledol.”

  “Oh, right, right. Gotcha. That makes more sense,” Artur said. “Still a load of old bollocks, mind you. Wasn’t her fault.”

  Dan turned on his stool. “What are you talking about? Of course it was her fault. If it wasn’t for her, Kalaechai would never have come looking. Ned would still be alive.”

  “True. Granted,” Artur conceded. “But think about Nona. Yer missing girl.”

  “What about her? What does she have to do with anything?”

  “Let’s say she escaped. Today. Right now, in fact. Let’s say she somehow got free from whatever maniac has got her, and she found her way right here to this bar. Security’s shoite, so she’d have no bother getting in.”

  Dan puffed out his cheeks, signalling his impatience. “And?”

  “And so in she comes, all teary-eyed or whatever. All snot and sobbing, like. She’s had a helluva time of it, but she’s alive. She’s made a break for it, and she runs right up to ye.”

  “Is this meant to be going somewhere?”

  “It is,” said Artur, taking another sip of his drink. “But wait, oh-ho, what’s this? It’s her kidnapper, coming after her. He wants her back, see? So he comes in here, and he shoots ye, right through the face. Feckin’ messy it is, too. They’ll be scraping yer brains off the fixtures and fitting for months.”

  Dan exhaled through his nose. “Art, what’s your point?”

  “My point is, who’s to blame for ka-blamming yer face off, Deadman? In that situation, I mean? The poor girl who’s just running for her life, or the guy who pulled the trigger?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Which one’s to blame?”

  “The shooter. The shooter’s to blame, but it’s not the same—”

  “It’s absolutely the same… Fonk, look at the tits on that one. They can’t be real, can they? I could live between those things for the rest of me life. Very happily, too.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” Dan repeated, although quite whose benefit it was for was hard to judge. “Kalaechai’s her father.”

  Artur raised his eyebrows and peered up at Dan, saying nothing.

  “What?” Dan asked, eventually.

  “I’m waiting for the penny to drop is what,” said Artur. When it was clear it wasn’t going to, he tutted. “Who’s yer current suspect number one? Who is it ye think took Nona? Remind me.”

  Dan opened his mouth.

  Then he closed it again.

  “Not the same,” he muttered.

  “Me bollocks,” said Artur. He drained the rest of his drink. “Think she’s OK? Ollie, I mean. We’ve established the other one’s probably dead by now. Rest her soul.”

  “Don’t know,” said Dan. “Don’t care. Not my problem.”

  “Yeah. Keep tellin’ yerself that, see how far it gets ye.”

  Dan felt someone approaching him on his left. “Hey, handsome,” purred a woman who, despite being several hundred times Artur’s size, was somehow wearing less fabric than he was.

  With a tilt of his head and a tip of his hat, Dan sent her scurrying back into the crowd, her eyes bulging in horror and disbelief.

  “Ha! Did ye see the look on her?” laughed Artur. “Did ye see her face when she saw yer ugly mug? That was great.”

  “Yup. Great.”

  Artur cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hoi, sweetheart, if its six and a half inch
es that yer after, I’m yer man!”

  Artur raised his straw and blew through it. “I can provide me own breathing apparatus. I’ll even take me shoes off. At the front door, so to speak. Can’t say fairer than that!”

  He thought for a moment. “Or the back door, for that matter. I’m game for anything.”

  He held his arms out at his sides, presenting himself to anyone who might be interested in such an offer. To his disappointment, if not his surprise, no one was.

  “Ah, well, feck ye, then,” he said. He peered up at Dan. “Ye going to drink that, or what? Sure, they’ve watered it down so much it’ll evaporate if ye don’t get a move on.”

  Dan used the back of his hand to slide his glass a few inches closer to Artur.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Artur said, depositing the end of his straw in the glass and taking a sip.

  The last sixty seconds or so replayed in Dan’s head. He had no idea why.

  “What did you say?” Dan asked.

  “What? When? About the six and a half inches?”

  “No.”

  “About me using the old tradesman’s entrance? Well, I’m not too proud to say it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve inserted meself up a lady’s a—”

  “No, you said… Taking your shoes off.”

  “Oh, that. Yeah. Well, it’s just polite, isn’t it?” said Artur. He belched loudly. “Manners cost nothing, Deadman. That’s what I always say.”

  Dan shifted in his stool so he was gazing directly down at the little man on the bar. “But why would you take your shoes off?”

  “What? Well, out of respect,” said Artur, looking ever so slightly incredulous that the question even had to be asked. “Out of respect for the old shagpile.”

  “Shagpile?”

  “The carpet, Deadman. Holy father, ye really are dense sometimes. Take yer shoes off at the door, so you don’t go traipsing mud or shoite or whatever over the carpet. Did yer mammy never teach ye nothing?”

  “Nothing about carpets,” Dan said.

  “That explains a lot,” said Artur. He burped again. “I mean, I don’t know what, exactly, but it certainly explains something.”

  Dan’s stool creaked as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bar. “Nona’s father. What’s his name?”

  “Don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Janto, was it?”

  “Again, I have no idea.”

  “He had no shoes on. In the photo, I mean.”

  “See what I mean? Even child murderers have the good graces to leave their shoes outside,” said Artur. “Even those gobshoites respect the shagpile.”

  Shoes. He took his shoes off.

  He always did that. That’s what she’d said. He always did that.

  An image flashed somewhere way at the back of Dan’s mind, like a fish breaking the surface of a lake, there one moment, gone the next.

  Dan’s eyebrows knotted together, as if grabbing for the image before it could escape. Too late. He felt it slip away like a dream, and found himself staring at his glass, instead.

  “Fonk it,” he said, draining the contents and slamming the container back down onto the bar top. He beckoned the bartender over. “Line them up.”

  “Now yer talking!” cheered Artur. “Let’s get totally feckin’ langered!”

  * * *

  The cooler evening air hit Dan as he stumbled down the steps from the club. He wasn’t drunk, exactly, but there was a certain amount of fuzziness that made his head feel like it was filled with soup.

  “Aw, man, that was deadly,” announced Artur. “Pure class. But ye might want to stop swinging me around so much, or I’m going to chuck me guts in yer pocket.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Dan warned. “And I’m not swinging you around.”

  “Yer not? I must’ve had more to drink than I thought.”

  Now that they were out of the heat and noise of the club, Dan could feel the cool air sharpening his senses again. Unfortunately, it wasn’t sharpening them enough.

  Dan failed to spot the large, rock-like figure stepping out from behind the Exodus as he approached it.

  He failed to react in time to the fist, as it smashed into his face, and he landed in a sitting position on the sidewalk.

  He failed to fight off the feeling of cold dread that bloomed in his gut as two other Igneons appeared as if from nowhere, and joined the first.

  He failed. Just like he’d failed the girl.

  All three Igneons loomed over him, their stone knuckles cracking, their diamond teeth on display. “Not so fast, Mr Deadman,” said the first. “Shornack has asked us to send you her regards.”

  “Oh… fonk,” Dan groaned, then a slab-like foot smashed against his skull like a hammer blow, and the sidewalk dragged him down into darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Hey. Psst.”

  Waking up after a beating felt not unlike rising from the dead, Dan often thought.

  First, there was the confusion, as the fractured memories of what had happened knitted themselves back together.

  Then came the surprise and relief at having woken up at all.

  Then came the pain, quickly followed by the nagging suspicion that perhaps death would have been the better of the two available alternatives, after all.

  “Psst. Wake up, ye big eejit.”

  “I’m awake,” Dan whispered.

  It took a moment for Artur to respond. “Are ye sure? Ye don’t look very awake.”

  “What’s happening?” asked Dan, still not moving. “How many?”

  “Still just the three. They’re gassing about something. Probably what they’re going to do to ye when ye wake up. By the looks of them, I think we can safely rule out it being anything nice.”

  “Where are we?”

  “It’s… I don’t know, I couldn’t really see where they took ye, but it’s nowhere pleasant, let’s put it that way. I think it’s some kind of waste water treatment place. Ye know, shoite, and what have ye.”

  “Gun?” Dan asked, although the lack of weight under his arm told him at least part of the answer.

  “I make it about twelve feet away. Sitting on a crate.”

  “Direction?” Dan whispered.

  “Over that way,” Artur said.

  Dan waited.

  “Oh, wait. Right. About fifteen o’clock. Maybe quarter past.”

  Dan let his head loll ever so slightly to his left. “Close enough,” said Artur.

  There was a pole or pillar or something at Dan’s back. Stone, anyway. Solid. His arms were wrenched around behind it, a set of energy cuffs buzzing around his wrists. He gave them a tug, while trying at the same time not to make any obvious movements.

  “I tried getting ye out, but they’re a bit beyond me,” Artur said. “Had they been proper handcuffs – you know, the old-fashioned metal type – I’d have had ye out of here already, but these energy bastards are nigh-on impossible to get free of.”

  Dan’s much smaller woman’s hand felt like it might get through if he pulled hard enough, but not without doing it some damage.

  But what was the point? If he got free, if he made a run for it, what was really the point? What good would it do?

  Anyway, did he want to run, even if he could?

  The girl’s mother had pinned all her hopes on him, and he’d failed. He’d let her down. He’d let them both down. Whatever the Igneons were going to do to him, it was almost certainly nothing he didn’t deserve.

  “Watch out,” hissed Artur. “One of them’s coming over.”

  The floor trembled beneath the Igneon’s footsteps, then something wet and warm crashed like a waterfall over the back of Dan’s head. He made a show of jumping awake in fright as it poured down over his face. “What the fonk?” he hissed.

  One of the Igneons loomed over Dan, an empty bucket in his hulking hands, a satisfied smirk on his face. “Wakey wakey.”

  Dan spat out some of the rust-colo
red liquid that had found its way into his mouth. Pressing his back against the pillar, he managed to get himself into something close to a standing position. “Hey, fellas,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  A fist hit him from out of nowhere, snapping his head to the right. He sagged against the column of stone, then clicked his jaw back into place and straightened again.

  Yes. Yes, he deserved this.

  “Sorry,” said Dan. “Didn’t quite catch that. Can you tell me again?”

  The fist came up a second time. BAM! Dan’s head crunched backwards against the pillar, and he saw shapes swirling behind his eyes. Stars and spirals and…

  And… something else, too. Floating among the dots and swirls. That image from back in the bar. That glimpse of something important. Something he was missing. He felt it, rather than saw it. Something he should know. Something he should have figured out by now.

  He tried to hold onto it, but as the stars faded, they took the other image with them.

  “Hit me again,” Dan urged.

  “Ha!” said the Igneon, without a hint of mirth. “Are you crazy?” He turned and looked back over his shoulder at his compatriots. “Mr Deadman here says I should hit him again.”

  “Is he crazy?” replied one.

  The first enforcer nodded. “That’s what I said. I think he might be. I think he might.”

  “Ask him about Lewey,” suggested the third.

  “I was about to do just that,” said the first. He turned back to Dan. “Where’s Lewey?”

  Dan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” said the Igneon. He called back over his shoulder. “He says he don’t know.”

  “He don’t know, huh?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  A jackhammer fist crunched into Dan’s stomach. He grimaced, but in annoyance, rather than pain. “The face. Hit me in the face.”

  The first Igneon appeared momentarily taken aback, but then was only too happy to oblige. The punch spun Dan part of the way around the column, and crumpled his legs beneath him.

  “What are ye doing?” hissed Artur from his pocket. “He’s gonna punch yer feckin’ face off.”

  Dan blinked rapidly, trying to hold onto whatever it was he wasn’t quite seeing. Those shapes. Circles? Was that it? Three… no, four circles of different sizes.