Work. Rest. Repeat.: A Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novel

by Frank Tayell

  Conscious that he was only delaying the inevitable, he glanced over at the small shower and toilet cubicles. If they were in use, the doors would turn opaque. Both doors were transparent. It was as he’d expected. No one had ever died in the shower. That death in the Assembly had been rare. Most people died in their sleep, but two deaths in the same pod was unprecedented, and it couldn’t have happened at a worst time. Five lost producers in one night.

  There was no point putting it off any longer, he decided. He swiped his hand down a panel to the side of the pods. Nothing happened. Ely frowned. He tried again. The pods should have rotated, bringing the double unit down to eye-level.

  “Control. Can you override all locks and doors in this room?”

  There was a series of clicks. Ely grabbed the double-sleep-pod, pulled it out and down. The panel covering the top half of the unit was opaque. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the emergency release and pulled the top up, and along. The moment the seal was broken, the cover turned clear, and Ely saw what was inside. There were two bodies, but they hadn’t died in their sleep. Their throats had been cut. Blood had pooled around their arms and necks. The wounds were identical, the cuts so deep that Ely saw flecks of white bone amidst the congealing blood. Looking down at those terrible wounds, there was no doubt in his mind. It was murder.

  There hadn’t been one as long as he’d been a Constable. He didn’t recall there ever being one before, not since the Towers were sealed off from the outside world.

  He pulled up the records for the couple, maximising them so they filled his display and hid from view the sight of the two bodies. Alphonse and Finnya Greene. Married for twelve years. She’d taken his surname when they got married, but neither had changed their names during the Re-Organisation. It wasn’t compulsory, of course, but the only other person Ely knew who hadn’t adopted one of the old names was Arthur.

  Perhaps there was a place called ‘Greene’, Ely thought, as he scanned through the rest of the couple’s record. He knew he was just trying to distract himself, trying to avoid thinking about what was in front of him. He told himself to focus. Then he saw something else. Finnya Greene didn’t wear a visor. Around ten percent of the City’s population didn’t. It was one of the few defects that couldn’t be identified before birth. Some workers reported motion sickness, others were just incapable of managing the fine focusing skills required to operate the display. That wasn’t the case with Finnya Greene. She had worn one up until six months ago. And then Ely remembered the woman. Instinctively his eyes flicked to the corner of his display. The screens cleared and he saw her lifeless, almost wax-like face, and this time he knew where they had met before.

  Six months ago he had been patrolling the Recreation Room. She had just finished five hours on one of the machines. Ely knew it was five hours, he’d checked afterwards. She’d approached him and held out her visor. “I don’t need it anymore,” was all that she’d said. He’d taken it, more out of confusion than anything else, and then she had walked off before he’d thought to question her.

  He’d ordered extra passive medical screenings, set up the system to monitor her activity on the social network, and had personally checked to see if she posted anything to the other-net. She hadn’t. His hourly checks became daily, then weekly and then, when there had been no hint of deviation whatsoever, he had forgotten her. She seemed to have gotten on with her life, and according to the records, she had done it happily despite being cut off from the full array of shared experience that the visor enabled.

  He checked her work records. They were exemplary. So too were her husband’s. He wore a visor, but had that same low level of social activity as his wife. Both had voted for Cornwall during the last election. Both were registered to vote for him again. That meant nothing. The current polls showed almost ninety-nine percent of Tower-One had already pre-registered their vote for Cornwall to be Chancellor.

  Both victims had a low criminal probability. Ely knew that couldn’t be correct, so he checked it again. But no, hers was at three percent, her husband at five percent. They should have had one of the highest in the Tower.

  He glanced down, then away again quickly. He found it hard to look at the bodies. He’d seen corpses before. In the event of a death, he and the nurses received the same alert. But he’d never seen them like this. He looked back at the wounds. The blood hadn’t spread far, just pooled around their necks. Was that normal? He tried to remember his training, five years before.

  He’d followed Arthur for a few days, learning how to use the display, how to monitor the other-net, and what to do if he found evidence of sedition. Then there had been a few hours on how to apprehend a felon. That had mostly consisted of the older man repeatedly throwing Ely halfway across an empty corridor. Most of the time had been spent learning how to complete the paperwork. Ely didn’t think there had been any discussion of what to do if there was a murder. The only words of advice he remembered that even approached relevance were ‘be thorough’.

  He checked that his camera was recording. It was and had been since he’d entered the room. He tracked slowly up and down the bodies, checking that he had captured every inch of the pod. Then he turned around, recording the rest of the room. Nothing appeared immediately amiss, but the system would analyse everything he recorded. It was far more reliable than his eyes and would identify anything he overlooked. He turned back to the bodies. There would have to be an official report.

  “The victims are Mr Alphonse Greene and Mrs Finnya Greene,” he said, keeping his voice low and solemn, “Their throats have been cut. By a sharp blade. Probably pressed down against their throats.”

  Was that right? He leaned over the pod. Yes. There wasn’t much room. The sides of the pod were too high for anyone to reach in and slash. How much strength would that have required? The blade had sunk to the bone, nearly decapitating the victims. It was the wrong question, he realised. The important one was why hadn’t the killer just stabbed his two victims? He thought he had an answer.

  “The method used was probably chosen due to the type and shape of the weapon,” he said. And that seemed right. It didn’t help him identify what that weapon had been, though.

  “Both murders had to be committed quickly and in quick succession,” he added. Once the pod lid was opened, the machine was turned off. At most, it took only a minute for someone to wake, but surely no one could sleep whilst their spouse was being murdered next to them. “The killer acted quickly,” he repeated.

  He turned to look at the pictures on the wall. The family seemed genuinely happy, genuinely close. That was unusual. He turned back to the pod, but not to the bodies. The couple’s two wristboards, and Alphonse Greene’s visor, were still in the slot on the pod’s side. Why had there been no alarm? Whilst awake, each citizen’s position, health, and activity were monitored through the wristboard. Whilst they slept it was monitored by the pod itself. The moment that their vital signs dropped an alarm should have been sounded.

  An alarm should have sounded when the door was opened, for surely it must have done when the killer came in to the room. The pods could be opened during the night, but only from the inside. In which case the worker’s supervisor would be alerted, and their productivity monitored during their next shift. The only way to open it from the outside was to use the emergency release that he had just used. In that case Control would be alerted, and the pod would be unusable until the whole unit had been reset.

  He turned slowly, looking around the room. Alerts should have been sent when the food-bar was unused, when they failed to print off their clothes for the day, or use their three minutes each of hot water.

  “Control.” The word caught in the back of his throat. He took a breath and spoke again. “Control, can you confirm whether there were any alarms sounded for Unit 6-4-17 last shift?”

  “I don’t remember any alerts last shift, except for that brawl.”

  “Can you check?”

  “Fine… No. No alerts for that un
it, but you would have received them if there were.”

  He’d known that, but Ely had hoped that somehow the fault lay in his own wristboard.

  “Why?” Vauxhall asked, “What’s the problem?”

  Ely took another breath.

  “Mr and Mrs Greene are dead.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “There’s nothing registering on my system.”

  “This wasn’t natural causes,” Ely interrupted. “This was murder.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath followed by a moment’s long silence.

  “Murder?” Vauxhall asked.

  “No question. Haven’t you got the feed from the camera in the room?”

  “I’ve got the feed, but the image is blank,” she said.

  Ely remembered that he’d found the same thing when he was outside, but he’d been distracted by Mr Durham.

  “I’m trying to rotate the camera,” Vauxhall said, “but the image is still blank. Is the lens covered?”

  “Just look at the image from my visor.” He waited. “Vox? Can you see them?”

  “I do,” she said, her voice stilted. “Alright, what do you want me to do?”

  That was a good question, and one Ely wished he could have asked her. He couldn’t, not when everything he said and did was going to be scrutinised by Chancellor Stirling for the slimmest reason to dismiss him.

  “We need to work out when this happened. No alerts were sent, but the pod was still opened.” He glanced at the two doors to the unit. “Someone had to come in here. Find out when.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  “Just get started,” he replied, evading the question.

  Ely turned back to look at the camera situated above the door. For reasons of privacy there was only one in each unit. Though it was mounted on a moveable bracket, remotely operated by the Controller, it usually pointed straight ahead. This one was turned to face the wall.

  Ely walked over to it, reached up and carefully moved it to face back into the room. The bracket was broken.

  “That has to be deliberate,” he murmured.

  “Ely, come in,” Vauxhall said.

  “Vox, have you found out when the door opened?”

  “Yes. Three a.m. shift-time.”

  “And which door? Night-side or day-side?”

  “Night-side. The day-side door didn’t open between the time the previous occupants left the shift before, and when Simon and Beatrice Greene left for school a few hours ago.”

  “Well, now we’re getting somewhere. So, who came in?”

  “No one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I say. No one came in. I’ve got no one registered moving around within fifty yards of the unit at that time.”

  “Well, did the door open at any other time?”

  “No, just at three a.m.”

  Everyone wore a wristboard. Everyone. It was the only way of accessing the Tower’s server, and through it the elevators, the printers, the food-bars, the workstations in the Assemblies, and the lesson materials in the classroom. Wherever a person went, their wristboard went, and that meant a citizen’s movements were always tracked. There were no exceptions.

  “Check again,” Ely said. “The killer had to open the door to get into the room. The door opened at three a.m. So that had to be the killer.” Just in time he stopped himself from turning that last sentence into a question. He did not want Chancellor Stirling thinking he was uncertain.

  “I’ve checked and rechecked,” Vauxhall said. “The door opened, then closed. A few minutes later it opened and closed again. But no one came in.”

  “Well, obviously someone—”

  “I mean we’ve no data,” she interrupted.

  “How long, exactly, between the door closing and then opening again.”

  “Three minutes forty seconds.”

  “I see,” Ely said. He looked between the door and the pods.

  “Is there anything else?” Vauxhall cut in on his thoughts.

  “Yes,” he said, as he opened the door to the unit and stepped outside. “Start timing.” He walked back inside and mimed rotating the pods. Then he mimed forcing the lid open. He didn’t mime the next part, but imagined leaning over and forcing a blade down with all his strength, then ripping it up and down again onto the throat of the second victim. Then he mimed closing the pod, rotating it and walked back over to the door.

  “How long was that?” he asked.

  “Two minutes fifty-eight seconds,” Vauxhall replied.

  So it was possible. Ely felt some relief at that.

  “And you say you’ve got no record of anyone entering the room?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He wondered whether it was worth checking the worker’s visor feeds from the previous evening. He decided it wasn’t, not yet. Someone who was being that meticulous in their preparations would have thought to take the visor off.

  “And no one in the corridor outside?” he asked.

  “I told you—”

  “And no alarms went off either?” he interrupted.

  “No, Ely, I—”

  “Well,” he said, interrupting her again, “it seems clear enough. The killer has a way of disconnecting the alarms, and some way of stopping the system tracking their movement.” The idea was unnerving. “But I bet they can’t make themselves invisible. Check the cameras in the hallway outside. One of them must have caught the killer.”

  “Fine.” She clicked off.

  He began to track the camera along the floor and walls. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but it would look more decisive than just staring at the bodies. He needed time to think. There were so many questions, so many possibilities. In his experience, crimes were easily solved. They only ever required checking the system to log a citizen’s position, and then checking the cameras to confirm the evidence against them. The implication of their being no record and no alarms sounded was so far beyond his experience that he found the notion terrifying.

  With nothing else upon which to draw inspiration, he turned his mind to the old movies he loved so much. Fourteen of them dealt with murders, all of resistance fighters in The War. In those, the killers were always depicted as having some form of psychological defect. That couldn’t be the case here. Psychosis had been bred out of the population. Those who exhibited deviation in later life were sent for rehabilitation. Of course, it was Ely’s responsibility to spot those deviations. Clearly, he had failed.

  Two bodies. Two victims, he had to remind himself. Except when he looked at them he saw the loss of fourteen shifts per week, fifty-two weeks per year. It would take nine months and seventeen years before they could be replaced.

  The number ‘90,764 hours’ came up on his display. He hadn’t realised he’d been talking out loud. Add to that the two felons on the way to the hospital and the one on her way to the prison, and that worked out at over a quarter of a million hours lost to Tower-One in just one night. And that was before taking into account the extra resources that replacing personnel demanded. That gave him an idea.

  “Vox?”

  “Yes, Constable?”

  “Were there any transports from the other Towers last night?” he asked.

  “The one you ordered to take those workers to the hospital has just left. Before that there was one that collected food to be shipped to the launch site. That was… thirty hours ago.”

  “Right. But you’ve got the airlock feed? Could anyone have left the Tower unnoticed?”

  “The nurses were there during transfer.” Since the Re-Organisation, and since they were rarely busy, the nurses were responsible for the transfers of people and materials to and from Tower-One. “They would have noticed. Why?”

  “I’m just reducing the number of possible suspects,” Ely said. The killer had to be someone from Tower-One. That was a start.

  Next, he decided to eliminate the obvious. He brought up the records for the two children. Both were
in class, both were busy transcribing notes on how to repair hydroponics systems. He opened their activity logs. The daughter, Beatrice, had woken first. She’d showered, printed her clothes for the day, and ordered breakfast from the food-bar. She’d selected the purple flavour, he idly noted. She’d then waited whilst her brother showered, dressed and ate. Together they’d gone to queue for the elevator to take them up to the classrooms. Again, he noted how close they were. It was unusual, but the more he learned about the Greenes the more unusual they seemed.

  He checked the records for the pods. Both children had slept through the entire night. Considering their current activity, he decided that they weren’t involved in the crime.

  He went back to check the records from the previous evening. The children had met their parents in Lounge-Three, what was now called The King’s Arms. It was a popular place for families, partly because it kept them away from the increasingly resentful gaze of those workers who were single. They had eaten, talked – and again Ely wished that the microphones were still on – then gone onto Recreation. The children had completed four and a half hours, then gone to loiter in one of the corridors with some other children. The parents had completed five hours before going to join them. The family had returned to Lounge-Three, talked for another hour, and then gone to queue up, twenty minutes early, for Unit 6-4-17. And as they waited, they kept on talking. Ely wondered what they had talked about.

  It wasn’t the children. Nor had the parents had any contact with anyone else the previous evening that might have precipitated such a violent end. He brought up the messages that the parents had received over the past week. He was surprised by how few there were. They were mostly the usual newsfeed articles and political broadcasts that filled Ely’s own inbox each shift. By law each candidate, even in a race with such a foregone conclusion as this one, had to communicate directly with the electorate. The same law required that each citizen read or watch each message. Judging by the length of time the message was open, and how long it took to scroll down the page, the Greenes actually had read them, or diligently pretended to.