Future's Beginning

by Frank Tayell

  “He wasn’t serving anything other than wine?” Siobhan asked.

  “Not that I’ve found evidence of,” Sholto said.

  “Then the numbers are wrong,” Siobhan said. “We’ve under forty empty bottles of wine, and sixty people in custody outside. When you factor in the wine spilled on the floor, and that surely some people left when the fighting started, that’s less than half a bottle per person.” She shone the light on the clear broken glass littering the ground. “A lot less. No one kept drinking once the fighting began. So they consumed less than a third of a bottle per person, perhaps a quarter bottle. Sure, people’s tolerance will have declined, but not by that much, not if Markus was running a pub back on Anglesey. Not when a good number of the bags brought back from the city clink with the sound of a salvaged bottle or three. But, if collectively they’d only drunk that little, then individually they can’t have consumed very much before the fight broke out. The only conclusion, then, is that it wasn’t wine in the bottles.”

  “The wine was fortified?”

  “Adulterated is a better word,” Siobhan said. “If Markus had access to spirits, why not sell them? In my experience, publicans usually water down their drinks, not stiffen them.”

  A pair of Marines carried a stretcher inside with which to collect the body of the man who’d been stabbed. Sholto lowered his voice. “I think Petrelli was drugged. Did I mention that something was added to his water bottle?”

  “You did. Two possible poisonings in one day,” Siobhan said. “That can’t be a coincidence, but it’s an odd choice of targets. A group that would be so far from the city their fate wouldn’t be immediately known, and a barman whose reputation is so sour, I can’t image his drinking companions would be much missed.”

  Sholto walked back to Markus. “Where did you get the wine from, Markus? Markus?”

  The man groaned, unclenched a little, but didn’t reply. Sholto picked up an unopened bottle, and turned it back and forth. “It looks fine,” he said.

  “Let me see?” Siobhan said. “Foil looks intact. Still tight. Pass me another unopened bottle. And a third. Tell you what, if you just lift up that crate. Wait—” But Sholto had already raised it onto the rickety table-top. “I was going to say that we should check for a claymore first, but never mind. Hmm. Yes, look, there are five indentations in the foil. You see these four, they’re equidistant, forming a square. That’s from when the foil was pressed onto the bottle. Do you see this fifth hole?”

  “In the centre?”

  “Not quite. It’s off-centre, and in a slightly different position on each bottle. That might be simply a quirk of the bottling machine, or it might be from a hypodermic. I’ll have to check the cork but… but how? I hate having the knowledge, but not the equipment.” Markus groaned again. “It’ll be far quicker just to ask him,” Siobhan added. “He seems to be improving.”

  “I think these were his takings,” Sholto said, picking up a canvas satchel from the floor. As he did, Markus tried to uncoil, reaching a hand towards the bag, but he only managed to roll onto his back, then his side. And then he threw up.

  “Yes, he seems to be getting better,” Siobhan said. “What was he taking in payment?”

  “Batteries. A wind-up USB charger. A jar of cumin. A couple of boxes of matches. It’s hardly the wealth of ages.” Sholto leafed through the rest of the bag’s meagre contents. “There’s no ammunition. Nothing of any real worth. You say there are hypodermic marks in each of those bottles? So let’s say some of the wine was removed. It was replaced with something else. How long would that take? An evening?”

  “An hour or two, but only after you’ve found the needle, the bottles, and the adulterant.”

  “Then it had to have been done before we left this morning,” Sholto said.

  “Which still leaves the question of why,” Siobhan said. “Markus, when did you get these bottles? No, it’s no good. We’ll have to give it another few hours.”

  The door opened. Kallie entered with four sailors Sholto recognised as being seasoned hands from the Harper’s Ferry.

  “There were no bottles outside,” Kallie said. “But there were a few glasses. Eight in total.”

  “Okay, good, now take this man to the infirmary,” Siobhan said. “He’s to stay under guard at all times, and to be kept away from all the other prisoners… or victims. No one talks to him unless I’m present, not even the admiral. That’s not because I don’t trust her,” she added quickly. “It’s a matter of procedure for the trial. We need to do this properly, by the book.”

  That got a round of understanding, if not approving, nods from the sailors. Unceremoniously, they hauled Markus outside.

  “You have a theory?” Sholto asked.

  “The wine was replaced with something industrial. Red wine might have been chosen over vodka, say, because it would disguise the chemical scent. That’s my working theory, but I’ll need more data before I propose a more detailed conclusion. You start on that side of the room, I’ll start here. Work your way around the wall first.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “If I knew,” Siobhan said, “we wouldn’t need to search.”

  Sholto shone his light into the corners, and then behind the trampled bags, and beneath the knocked-over tables.

  “It doesn’t make sense for Markus to have known what he was selling,” he said as he lifted a crushed sleeping bag. Broken glass lay underneath, but it was recognisable as having previously been a tumbler. “Surely he’d know the side effects of drinking industrial ethanol.”

  “Would he care?” Siobhan asked.

  “I think so,” Sholto said. “Back on Anglesey, he handed in a bag of pills. They were mostly opiates that people had traded with him. He said he was donating them to the hospital out of a sense of civic duty. Rachel said Markus was handing them in because there was no profit in getting someone hooked on a habit for which there was no reliable supply.”

  “What a charming woman,” Siobhan said.

  “Oh, she was that,” Sholto said. “At the time, we misinterpreted the message behind her words, thinking it a warning against trusting Markus rather than an indication of her true character. Even so, I think it says something about the man. He wouldn’t have poisoned potential customers, not when he was so short on allies. Ah, hang on.”

  “What?”

  “I found the knife.”

  Siobhan came over. She bent, shining her torch on the slim blade. “A hunting knife. Eight-inch blade, covered in blood. Looks like a usable print, there on the handle. That’s something. Since we’ve got the other drinkers under arrest, we can easily find a match. Although I think that rules out one theory.”

  “That the murder was the real reason for the riot?”

  “Yes. If it were, then they would have thrown the knife in the sea. No, I think that death was another stupidly tragic accident.” She opened the bag she’d taken to Dundalk, and had been carrying since. “Now, let’s take that fingerprint, and if we get very lucky, it might match one of the prints I took from the wreck.”

  “How long will it take?” he asked as she opened a tub of powder.

  “Not long… not… ah, no. It’s not a match. There’s a void here, on the blade, do you see? The killer has a scar on their finger. That will make it easier to find who wielded the blade, though I doubt it will help us find who was responsible for the riot.”

  An hour later, Siobhan stopped. “That’s it,” she said.

  “You found something?”

  “No, I mean we’re finished. There’s more to be found here, but we don’t have time to do this properly. We don’t have the people, or the equipment. By now, some of the suspects will be sober enough to give a statement. I’m going to the infirmary to interview them. Will you take what we found back to the command centre?”

  “All of it?”

  “For now, we only need one empty bottle, and only one glass. Take all the full bottles, the knife, and Markus’s takings. I’ll
get a couple of sentries to stand guard outside. We won’t let anyone back in tonight. If an interview ends with a lead, we can come back and search again.”

  Sholto collected the evidence and left the warehouse, mulling over what they’d found, and whether they’d really found anything. When he reached the command centre, he found something: he found his duffel bag was missing.

  He put the evidence on the bunk, knelt down and checked underneath. Then he checked the folding cots nearby, but it wasn’t there. He stood, looking around, confused. To him, the photographs of Bill and Daisy, of Annette and Kim, and the cramped selfie containing all five of them, were beyond price, but to anyone else they were worthless.

  When was the last time he’d seen it? It was in the morning, wasn’t it? He replayed the events of an increasingly long day. Yes, his bag had been there. He’d moved it underneath the bunk just to make sure no one tripped over it. He knelt down again, triple-checking exhaustion wasn’t making him miss what was in front of his eyes. It was gone. He was sure of it.

  The beds were indistinguishable. Twice in the last week, he’d found someone asleep in his cot. The duffel bag was a different matter. Back on Anglesey, when the other members of the collective had thrown themselves into knitting, Annette had taken a turn. Her attempt at a scarf had resulted in a two-foot-long, two-inch-wide pink and green streamer, which she’d given to him, and which he’d tied around the bag’s handle.

  Someone had taken his bag. That begged two questions, but he thought he knew the why, and there might be an easy way of finding out the who. He walked over to the cabin. It was still locked.

  The main door to the warehouse swung inward as a pair of sentries came in. They stopped in the doorway, seemingly surprised to find the rest of the building empty.

  “Where is everyone?” one asked.

  “It’s been a busy day,” Sholto said. “Were you on the checkpoints?”

  “Guarding the grain ships,” the woman said. “Are you just back from the airport?”

  “The… oh, yes. There was a riot earlier. Everyone’s still dealing with that. Stand sentry on the door until the admiral returns.”

  He walked back to his cot and picked up the evidence. If his hunch was correct, then none of it would be needed, but he’d been wrong too many times before.

  Chapter 16 - The Unconscious Clue

  Belfast Harbour

  They’d established the infirmary in a set of offices, adjacent to the seawall, previously belonging to Belfast Harbour Maritime Conservation. Like most of the buildings in the harbour, it was a cladded-steel prefab, but it was close enough to the anchored John Cabot that electricity could be piped ashore. The freighter’s batteries were already working overtime, powering lights and the desalination gear aboard the ship. There wasn’t much spare electricity, but it was more than enough for the meagre collection of medical equipment they’d salvaged. Since they had even fewer medicines, the ancient ventilator, decrepit defibrillators, and creaking EKGs offered little more than certainty as to the reason that a patient might die. In their few days of residence, the infirmary had been a place where cuts were stitched and wounds were sterilised. The more serious cases were shipped over to the John Cabot where they usually died, but at least their last hours were spent in peace.

  It was a deep frustration for the admiral, and for her crew of war-zone surgeons and battlefield medics, that triage was as much as could be done. Transferring the terminal cases to the container ship was more a gesture for those left ashore. It was an illusion, a myth, a fantasy that the sick could still be cured, and that illusion had finally been broken; the infirmary was now full.

  The beds were narrow cots, the same style of folding beds as those in the command centre. Here they’d been laid on pallets so that a recumbent patient was four feet above the ground. All the beds were occupied, as were the chairs in the waiting room. More of the poisoned brawlers were sprawled in the storeroom where salvaged medical equipment was sorted before, usually, being dumped into the sea. Patients filled the pharmacy, where a new recruit was hastily clearing the mostly-empty shelves of the few still-efficacious medicines. The sick lined the corridors, but Sholto stopped looking at them, and began counting the guards. They were everywhere. It was a necessity, of course, but was the purpose of the poisoning to remove the guards from their posts? He remembered the missing claymores. Was the purpose to move all the guards here? There were too many people present to search the building, too many places to hide an explosive. A pair of doctors dashed past, their expressions grim. As Sholto stepped out of their way, he caught sight of Leo Fenwick slumped in the corner, looking as worn and battered as the plastic chair in which he sat.

  “Leo, what happened?” Sholto asked.

  “Ah, Thaddeus,” Fenwick said, his voice unsteady, his face ashen except where a neat bandage covered his left cheek. “I… I heard you were back.”

  “What happened to you?” Sholto asked again.

  “A bottle, I think,” Fenwick said. “I… I was… I heard the riot. I tried to stop it. They wouldn’t listen.” He raised a hand to the bandage. “I tried to gather everyone I could. I didn’t take too many, did I? The checkpoint… are we safe?” He made to stand, but Sholto laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s fine. We’re okay.”

  “It was Markus,” Fenwick said. “He was running a bar. God knows what he was selling, but it looks like he’s poisoned everyone.”

  “Since he’s in the same state himself, I don’t think it was intentional,” Sholto said. “Rest up, it’s going to be a long couple of days.”

  He went to find the admiral, but she was inserting a tube into a woman’s stomach. He left her to it and went to find Markus instead.

  Behind the office building, but in the same fenced-depot, was a small garage containing eight forklift trucks and a large, lockable cage. They’d been using that as their jail, though it had principally been a place to hold the drunks overnight until Nicola Kennedy could pass judgement in the morning. Kallie was outside, next to Toussaint and Petrelli who were standing guard.

  “First the bomb, now this. What’s going on, sir?” Petrelli asked.

  “Not so loud,” Sholto said, looking around, but no one else was within earshot. “Whatever this is, it’s coming to a head. Keep your eyes open, your weapons ready. Markus is inside?”

  “With Siobhan,” Kallie said.

  “Then come with me,” Sholto said. He turned again to the two Marines. “Safeties off.”

  “Seriously?” Toussaint asked.

  “Seriously,” Sholto said.

  Leaving the guards more watchful than ever, he and Kallie went inside.

  Markus was alone in the cage. Siobhan sat at a battered desk, watching him. Sholto placed the evidence bag next to her.

  “You didn’t leave it in the command centre?” Siobhan asked.

  Sholto glanced over at Markus, then gestured they should move out of earshot. Only when all three stood in the lee of a rusting yellow forklift, did he speak, and even then, he kept his voice low.

  “My bag was gone,” he said. “It was underneath my bunk in the command centre, and someone took it.”

  “Someone stole your bag? Why?” Kallie said. “What was in it?”

  “Nothing much,” Sholto said. “There were some clothes, photographs, a couple of books. Nothing of value to anyone except me, but the thief didn’t know that. Kallie, you and Colm were the first to get to Markus’s warehouse?”

  “The first that didn’t go inside and have a drink,” she said.

  “Tell me what happened. Start with this morning, just after we left.”

  “I was in the command centre, looking through the satellite images,” she said. “No one else was there. No one who didn’t belong. Lieutenant Whitley was floating around, most of the time. Colm popped in when he was passing, and Mr Fenwick was in and out. Some of the guards from the night-shift were asleep. A couple more tried to sleep and then went out again. I didn’t see anyon
e unusual, but I wasn’t really looking.”

  “If you were looking, you would have seen people dressed in blue and grey,” Siobhan said. “Anyone could have donned that uniform, walked in, and taken that bag. When did you leave the command centre?”

  “When I got the phone call about the bomb,” Kallie said. “I left the cabin, but I locked it. I made sure to do that. Then I went to find Lieutenant Whitley. I saw Colm first, and sent him to find John, and I went back inside to wait by the phone. I was only gone for a few minutes. I… I don’t think anyone was inside the command centre. I looked around, and I thought I was alone in there. The sailors who’d been asleep, I think they’d all woken and gone out by then. I might be wrong.”

  “We have a guard roster,” Siobhan said. “We can check.”

  “If we have time,” Sholto said. “If we have need. What then?”

  “I stayed by the phone, in the cabin,” Kallie said. “I wasn’t able to concentrate, so I was just looking out of the window at the rest of the warehouse. I’m sure I would have seen someone take your bag. The admiral came back with Siobhan, and then you went to meet Sholto in Belfast, while Lieutenant Whitley went to search the armoury, check on the guards, and… and I’m not sure what else. That was about the time I said I needed some air. Colm didn’t want me to go out. I guess he was worried there’d be another bomb somewhere, but I’d been in the command centre all day. I know I locked the door to the cabin. And there were sentries outside. Two of them. Um… then Colm and I went for a walk. We saw a lot of people, and he seemed to know them all.”

  “He’s good at learning people’s names,” Siobhan said.

  “We didn’t see anything,” Kallie said. “Not until Alexis Keegan ran up to us. I think that’s her name. You should ask Colm. I sort of recognised her face, but I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to her before.”

  “Keegan? You’re sure?” Siobhan asked. “What did she say?”

  “That there was a fight in the warehouse,” Kallie said. “Colm and I went there. He said I should stay outside, but…” She shrugged. “That’s about it. A few minutes later, you arrived.”