by K. C. Finn
“She’s plucky,” Flash observes, looking back to Cae, “I didn’t know you liked ‘em plucky.’
“Get back to the subject, Morgan,” Angelica suddenly says in a sharp tone. Cae isn’t sure of when exactly she started listening in again, but something in her tone makes Flash wriggle against his restraint again for a moment.
“Oh yeah,” Flash says eventually. “You won’t get in.”
“Yeah,” replies Kendra, “you covered that already.” Then she turns her head to Cae and says quickly: “Is he always this useless? I’m finding it a little hard to see the crimelord here.”
Flash struggles so hard that his steel chair moves forward a little. The guards swiftly pull him back into place. Cae watches with interest as Kendra looks back to the aggravated villain, her expression faultlessly uninterested.
“It’s called the Atomic Circus,” Flash says abruptly. “It used to be a little drug market, but other businesses are moving in all the time now. I guess it’s the economy booming or something.”
Cae just nods at the large crook. He’d guessed that much for himself.
“And it moves around town, and it pops up at irregular times,” Kendra completes. “Tell us something we don’t know, if you can.”
Flash’s angry grimace suddenly breaks into a grin. “You’re a little butch for my taste, but I think I’m starting to like you, sugar,” he says to Kendra.
“Oh lucky me,” she replies.
“If you ever get tired of little pale-face here, we should talk,” he says. “I’ve got a thing for rough chicks.”
“Off-topic, Mr Morgan,” Angelica butts in again, but this time her tone is much calmer.
“Sure,” he says with a slow nod. “I’ve got more. There’s a phone number that you call to get in. It changes all the time. And there’s a password. But that changes too. Then the White Van Man picks you up, and you party ‘til dawn.’
“The White Van Man?” Cae asks sharply, and he can’t help but catch Angelica’s eye. She too is suddenly more interested in the conversation.
“Uh-huh,” Flash says. “And don’t ask me who he is, ‘cause I don’t know. We know better than to ask each other’s names in my line of work.’
Kendra lets out her little laugh. “Work,” she repeats.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” Angelica asks as a distant bell signals the end of visitor time.
Cae waves a gloved hand at her before Flash can speak again. “It doesn’t matter,” he says with a small smile at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve got what I need.”
11.
“Cae?”
“Yeah?”
“You know when you said you didn’t want to get into the Atomic Circus?”
“Yeah?”
“That was a lie, right?”
“Yeah.”
Little else was said as Cae and Kendra traipsed back to Buchanan Street, where Cae is now fumbling once again for his keys, a common side-effect of never removing one’s gloves. Cae’s mind has been racing during the short walk with all the new connections his mind is making.
Once into clean air, the odd couple return desperately to the pile of paperwork on Cae’s coffee table, raking through with a fresh perspective.
“That Angelica chick mentioned the van before right?” Kendra asks.
“Yup,” Cae replies, his eyes settling once again on the little bottle of LIFT, which is sitting in the centre of the table mockingly. “Which gives us a big tick in the drug addict column, and a good idea of where our victim went the night before he died. But we still don’t know why he died.”
“Or who killed him,” Kendra adds.
“Or where they killed him,” Cae continues.
A silent moment passes.
“And then there’s that whole five thousand metre fall thing,” Kendra says.
“Ah. I’d forgotten about that,” Cae replies. “Well there goes my theory.”
“You had a theory already?” Kendra asks, crossing her arms, “I’m still in ‘What the hell is going on?’ mode over here.”
Cae drops his files and kneels down beside the table. He doesn’t look at Kendra when he speaks, his eyes roving over the paperwork.
“There are only three basic motives for crime,” he explains. “Money. Power. Passion.”
Kendra considers this for a moment. “So according to that, I’d say this was about money.”
“Precisely,” Cae says with a nod. “Richmond’s transcript says that Brooks was lacking funds.”
“And you trust him? This Richmond guy?” Kendra watches Cae carefully, but he still doesn’t look up from the table. She now realises he’s staring at the tiny bottle once more.
“It’s unusual, I grant you, but Redd Richmond’s a pretty honest guy. You kind of have to be if you’re going to be a dirty rotten snitch.”
“Okay,” Kendra replies. “So Brooks” money issues give us the “why”. And maybe whoever he owed the money to gives us the “who”. That’s likely to be a drug baron of some kind, who we’ll find at this circus place, which leads us to the “where’.”
Cae nods throughout her words. “That only leaves the ‘how’ to figure out,” he says eventually, “and I suspect it’s going to be bigger than the other three put together.”
After another moment he breaks his staring contest with the empty drug bottle and leans back against the sofa. Kendra settles herself at the other end and kicks off her boots.
“I thought of another ‘how’,” she says.
Cae turns to look at her, one black eyebrow raised.
“How do we find the Atomic Circus?” She asks.
“Oh I have an idea,” Cae replies. “We start working on that one tonight, after dark.”
“Okay,” Kendra says. She sees a conflicted look fall onto her friend’s young face for a moment. Cae blinks it away quickly, but it’s there just long enough to remind her of what Flash said at the prison.
“Your mother was murdered, wasn’t she?” Kendra asks quietly.
After a sharp breath, Cae closes his eyes. “When I was nineteen,” he says with a small nod.
She can tell by the silence that follows that Cae isn’t willing to share more, but it doesn’t stop her wanting to know. Money. Power. Passion.
“Which motive was it?” She questions.
Cae just laughs a tiny, empty laugh.
“None of the above.”
Roll Up, Roll Up
12.
A common fact about your everyday criminal is that they’re usually easy to find. People tend to have a keen sense of danger, a funny feeling on an empty street that tells them to grab onto their briefcase more tightly. The common instinct is to remove yourself from said empty street as soon as possible, to flee from the danger. A far rarer instinct is to follow the feeling, to follow until you feel completely sure that there is something right there behind you, waiting to attack.
Caecilius Rex and Kendra Nai have that unusual instinct in common, and they make a formidable team prowling the smog-filled streets of Dartley after dark. The plan is to apprehend the nearest criminal and beat the current number and password of the Atomic Circus out of him or her. There is, of course, an obvious flaw in this plan, which Kendra is keen to point out to Cae after their third arrest.
“None of these deadbeats know about the circus!” She moans as another panda car appears to take in a mugger they’ve just caught.
“Can’t you be happy that we’ve stopped two robberies and a stabbing tonight?” Cae asks. “Because I can.”
“Sure, good for us!” She says. “But any idiot cop can do that.” The young officer handcuffing the mugger looks up indignantly. Kendra looks at him for a moment, but doesn’t bother to add “No offense”. Instead she turns back to Cae and says, “When you have an objective, everything else is surplus. If you don’t achieve the objective, the whole mission’s a failure. The night is wasted.”
Caecilius knows better than to argue with military logic. He steers Ken
dra away from the bemused policeman still making his arrest, and tries to give her a confident smile.
“It’s a good job we have plenty more of this night ahead then, isn’t it?” He asks.
They walk away from the scene and into another smog-filled alley, sensing out the danger as they go. It’s a quarter to two in the morning by now, and Kendra’s nerves are wearing thin.
“How is it that you’re so good at some things and so incredibly bad at others?” She asks as they trek through a dirty square.
Cae brushes off her directness. “You’re going to have to elaborate if you want an answer to that,” he replies.
“Back there, with the Pandas,” she continues, “You were all wordy, in control, authoritative. And at the prison you kept this huge cool vibe going, thinking all the time.” Kendra kicks a tin can and it rattles down the next street, echoing away. There is silence for a moment. The pair are clearly alone for now. “But you’re so clumsy,” she adds. “No co-ordination, no sense of direction. I bet you don’t even know where we are right now.”
It isn’t a question, but Kendra glares at Cae as though he ought to reply. “No, but you do,” he qualifies. “That’s why you’re here. That and your ridiculous amount of muscle for grabbing muggers.”
“You’ve missed every catch I’ve ever hauled at you,” Kendra admonishes. “I’ve noticed, Cae, I’ve just never said.”
The detective presses on through the thick dirty fog into the next street, starting to feel the familiar tingle of danger nearby. Something is not quite right, but Kendra’s far from able to notice.
“And I don’t know if it’s the gloves that mess up your motor skills or if it’s just you,” she says loudly, “but I-‘
A cry breaks out in the next street, and all talk is forgotten as Kendra bursts forward with haste. Cae follows as rapidly as he can, cautious not to lose her in the smog. His heavy breaths make the gasmask hot around his chin, and his chest is heaving when he finds Kendra pinning a tiny man to the paving stones.
Another man, maybe only a few years younger than Cae himself, kneels on the ground, shuddering and sobbing a little. The tiny man under Kendra is having a gun wrestled out of his grip. He whimpers something hardly audible under his tatty mask.
“Alright you little weasel,” says Kendra, ramming a hand down hard on the back of the man’s neck. “Tell me what you know about the circus.”
Cae takes the gun from Kendra’s free hand and pockets it, typing a quick IM to the Pandas with co-ordinates attached.
“I don’t know any damn circus,” the tiny man splutters in a tiny voice, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sure, they all say that at first,” Kendra says, applying a little more pressure to the nape of the man’s neck. “The Atomic Circus. Ring any bells?”
“Yes.”
It is not the man pinned to the ground that replies, but the other, younger fellow. He stands up, still sobbing and retching between his words, his eyes blurry and wet.
Cae approaches him gently. “What do you know?” He asks.
“Only that it’s a freaking joke,” says the young man, revealing a familiar looking plastic bottle. Cae instinctively runs a hand over his inside pocket, finding his empty tub of LIFT still in its place. The young guy lets out a huge chest-racking sob, then gathers his breath to continue. “I asked for remember, but this must be remorse,” he says, shaking the bottle. “I’ve been crying for hours; I can’t stop.”
Cae catches sight of the bottle in the fading streetlight. REMEMBER is written on its side in just the same way as LIFT.
The sirens of the police coming to collect the gunman are sudden and ear-splitting in the echoing street. The young man’s eyes widen sharply, and he looks down at the bottle in a panic.
“It’s alright,” Cae says quickly. “I’m not going to shop you for the drugs, not if you give me the number and the password for the circus.”
The man looks to the lights of the Pandas coming into view through the smoke, then back to Cae, his blue eyes serious and desperate over his big black mask.
“Time is ticking,” Cae says, and he hears the doors of the police cars opening behind him.
The young man shoves the bottle away, filtering his pockets until he finds a crumpled business card. “This was good for Thursday,” he says, still weak and weepy, “I can’t guarantee the password’s the same.”
“It’ll do,” Cae says. He grabs the card swiftly and turns to the approaching officers.
“Another one, detective?” Says the nearest cop. “You’re gonna put us out of a job tonight.”
Kendra hands the tiny man over, and Cae proffers the gun to the officer.
“This young man was held at gunpoint,” he says. “He’s pretty shaken up.”
The young man gives him a sad, grateful look.
“Oh,” Cae adds quickly. “And he’s also in possession of drugs. Arrest him.”
The young man manages to squeal “What the-” before two police officers are grabbing him and covering his mouth while they give him his rights. Kendra returns to Cae’s side, rubbing her hands and watching the arrest.
“Why’d you do that?” She asks. “You made a deal with the guy.”
“I can’t risk him calling the circus to tell them two cops are on their way,” Cae explains. “Why do you think we’ve been arresting these idiots all night? Any one of them could leak our ID before we make the call otherwise.”
Kendra smiles to herself as reason sinks in. “But this gives us a whole twenty four hours before those goons get out again,” she completes. “So what now?”
“Simple,” Cae replies. “We go to the circus.”
13.
“Didn’t circuses used to be nice things?” Kendra asks. “I’m sure somebody told me that once, or it was in a documentary or something.”
“The only definition I know is ‘organised chaos’,” Cae answers, but he too has a vague recollection that the word meant something different before the Greatest War.
It is ten to ten the following morning, and after a meagre and broken sleep, the detective and the soldier are waiting at the jetty. Cae made the call, and had a huge relief when he discovered that the password was still valid. They told him ten o’clock, and he told them the jetty, for two passengers. And that was that.
Now all they have to do is look out for the White Van Man, which Kendra is focusing all of her efforts into, scanning deep into the morning fog as though she can see any further than Cae can. There isn’t much point in looking; in the daylight they won’t know the van until it’s right in front of them, so Cae is content to let his mind wander over the new facts he’s learned of late.
REMORSE makes you cry like a little child uncontrollably.
REMEMBER, presumably, helps you to organise your mind.
So what does LIFT do?
Perhaps it lifts your mood, which would explain the awful cheeriness that Brooks was described to have every day. A chemical pick-me-up for a depressed individual in a horrible job. It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how extreme his murder was. It makes Cae think that perhaps the chief is right; perhaps there is a deeper scandal at work.
“There,” Kendra says quietly, and no sooner than the words leave her lips, the little white van appears in the smoke. The man inside is not only masked against the elements, but masked all over his head, and quite impossible to identify. He pushes a button and the side of the van slides open.
Cae and Kendra board silently, and Cae is a little surprised to see a few other passengers inside already. Benches line the walls of the dark little van, and the cage protecting the driver helps Cae to the conclusion that this might have been a police vehicle in a previous incarnation. The door slides shut with a pneumatic click.
A greasy looking man sits in one corner, a long grey beard hanging out of the bottom of his mask. He clears out his phlegmy throat, eyeing Kendra’s legs as she takes up a bench.
“If you’re looking to sel
l her down at the circus, Mister, I’ll pay double in advance,” he rasps.
“And if you’re looking to transport your teeth right through to the back of your skull, you’ll keep talking grandpa,” replies Kendra.
Nobody speaks for the rest of the journey, which is mercifully short. The sounds of crowds and music fill the atmosphere as soon as the van door is opened, and Cae and Kendra pile out with the contents of the vehicle. The scene is a large clearing with sand underfoot, and Cae supposes they have reached the dunes outside of town.
The smog is lessened here by huge fans sucking in the smoke, and Cae can’t remember a time when he’s seen so far into the distance. He stops for a moment, in awe of the strange perspective. There are people everywhere, masked and hurrying from stall to stall in what looks like a huge market. Coloured banners and flags with different signals on them go up and down in different places, and every time a new flag shoots up a hoard of people rush to the stall and its owner. Now and then a voice calls out over the pulsating music of the stalls.
“Skin traders! Skin traders!” A voice calls out. “Repairs and renovations! Afroblack back in stock!”
Sure enough when Kendra and Cae pass by the stall, a pile of glass slides holding slabs of human skin sit waiting with a neon yellow price tag. The shade is not unlike Kendra’s own. A dark-skinned thug with a bullet-hole in his cheek is sitting under the stall’s canopy, forcefully clutching a wad of banknotes.
“This stuff was illegalised at least fifty years ago,” Cae mutters as he and Kendra wind through some tightly packed stalls full of what appear to be personal slaves. “After we find out what happened to Brooks, we’re-‘
“Coming back to shut this place down,” Kendra states immediately. “Count on it,” she adds, her eyes narrowing over a red silky tent with a beckoning girl outside.
“Try not to look angry,” Cae reminds her. “We’re druggies remember? This should all look like fun to us.”
“Donations! Donations!” Cries a nearby man. He is standing outside a white stall that has dirty surgical screens covering its front. “Skin seven hundred! Blood two-fifty! Eyes six thousand apiece! Donations welcome!”