Sacrifice of Fools

by Ian McDonald

  Louise had been more than a baby. She’d been a career opportunity for both of them. Somebody had to stay at home and do the parent thing, and Mikey had wanted to get out of Renswick Bart and do it on his own, one man, one accountancy package, one Internet connection, freeing Roisin to go back to three stripes on the sleeve of her detective’s beige trench coat. Except she knows that the parent thing is more time-consuming and boring and schedule-disrupting than Mikey’s saying. Louise is sitting in her trug and waving her fists and smiling and bringing it down around him. She knows he’s lost one client because of a missed deadline. He’s never said. He never will. Like he never will say that he’s jealous she’s moving on and he’s running to stand still. Maybe not even standing still any more. Watching her pull away from him.

  Jesus, Mikey. You should tell me this. Communicate with me. You spend three hundred quid a month on connecting with the infosphere through that white box on the study floor, but you won’t connect with me, for free. Or is that what you want, contact without communion? The great lie of the network age, that connection is communication.

  The Communication Age is great and dandy while it’s just ourselves to talk to. Suddenly there’s another voice to answer back, and we realize we’ve never really had very much to say. What we have on show doesn’t impress them, our scrap-books and fetishes and football stickers and Star Trek collections. What we want to sell them, the trinkets and tack of our racial Home Shopping Channel, they don’t need.

  It’s hard, sitting on your fiddle-backed chair at your scratched repro Victorian pedestal table in your Sittingbourne in Cotswold Close, to believe in eight million settlers from a world sixty light years away, one hundred thousand of whom are in these six wee counties of North East Ireland.

  Mikey has got Louise settled. She’s going off.

  And Roisin Dunbar’s mobile rings.

  Mikey looks thunder at her as Louise screws up her face for the inevitable explosion.

  It’s Willich. Her boss. At this time of night, this has to be big shit. It is. There’s been an incident down on University Street. A major incident. He needs everyone in CID there, now. Seems someone walked into the Shian Welcome Centre and blew five Outsiders clean away.

  DCI Willich whispered the secret key of all police work to Roisin Dunbar the day she was promoted to DS. Everything is either a fucking mess, or a bloody fucking mess.

  Holds good for life in general, DS Dunbar’s found.

  Three ambulances, five patrol cars and a bike: this is a bloody fucking mess. Plus most of CID: she recognizes, in addition to the SOCOs’ evil little black van, Richard Crawford’s Nissan, Darren Healey’s bashed Ford, Tracey Agnew’s scarlet lady VW — the ultimate girlie-mobile — Ian Cochrane’s white Toyota. New alloys. Flash git.

  ‘Police. Let me through, please. Police.’

  The crowd of gawkers parts guiltily. Bad consciences about being here at all. She notices the salarymen leaning out the windows of the Holiday Inn. One of them has a camcorder. She points him out to a uniform. The officer goes over to shout up at him to turn that bloody thing off. Old paranoias cling. In the old days, the camera could steal much more than your soul.

  There’s an Outsider leaning against the side of an ambulance, shaking violently. Tracey Agnew is offering it a cup of tea and trying to coax forth information. She’s wearing aerobics gear under her raincoat.

  Detective Chief Inspector Bob Willich is in the hall. He looks like cinders.

  ‘Bloody fucking mess, boss?’

  ‘Bloody fucking mess, Rosh.’

  She goes into the room. Walls, ceiling, floor, things on the floor swim for a moment. She grasps the door frame, one, two, three slow, deep breaths. Steady. You’re all right.

  Barbara Hendron the pathologist is crouching by the side of the first body in her scrubs and rubber. She looks up from her work, nods to Roisin. Dunbar’s never been able to see her without her imagination dressing her up in Middle European evening dress, cloak and plastic fangs. She must have seen Christopher Lee look up from a drained corpse in exactly that way, once upon a Saturday night Horror double bill. There’s a man with her, vaguely familiar; tall, tweedy, Gerry Adams beard. His hair could have been painted on with black vinyl silk.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Dr Robert Littlejohn, Department of Xenology in Queen’s,’ Barbara Hendron says, poking at something with sharp steel. ‘I called him in. I’m out of my depth here. I need someone who knows what should be where, and what shouldn’t. And he only lives around the corner.’

  Dunbar knows where she knows him from. All those Outsider Specials they did on BBC Northern Ireland when we discovered we’d been volunteered to billet an entire shipload of aliens: that calm, reasonable, slightly smug voice telling us everything was going to be all right, they were just like us, really, no more different than Chinese or Indians or anything else.

  Ah hah.

  Dr Robert Littlejohn stands up, wipes his fingers on his green plastic pinafore, offers a hand to Roisin Dunbar.

  ‘You ever hear those urban legends about old Californian spinsters who shampooed their poodles and then put them in the microwave to dry?’ he says.

  Ian Cochrane of the new alloy wheels looks up from what he’s doing with the computer, grins, mimes an explosion.

  ‘The word “maser” mean anything to anyone?’ Littlejohn asks.

  Ian Cochrane frowns.

  ‘Maser. Microwave laser. Poodle in the microwave effect, with a vengeance. Our killer comes in, one shot.’ Littlejohn stands over the body on the floor, both hands gripping the imaginary weapon. ‘About half a megawatt in an invisible beam no wider than a thread. Totally silent, totally effective, totally untraceable. No cartridges, no powder burns, no rifling, no shell to retrieve. Water flashes to steam. Steam pressure detonates the skull. Boom! Head goes off like a hand grenade. On to the second.’ He steps to the body by the fireplace. ‘Click. Boom! Turns, takes out the third, then goes into the back to kill the kids. Two shots. Boom, boom!’

  ‘What about the hands?’ Dunbar asks. ‘The posture of the victims?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue, my dear.’

  Roisin Dunbar remembers that she’d never been able to watch more than thirty seconds of Dr Robert Littlejohn. Too full of himself by half.

  ‘You certain it was a maser?’ Ian Cochrane asks.

  ‘The necks are cauterized. The intense heat seals the wound. Also, you may have noticed a damp pink haze sticking to everything. Vaporized brain.’

  ‘I’ve been hearing something about these Outsider weapons,’ Cochrane says. Murder isn’t his area of expertise. He’s a terrorist boy, from way back, clearing up those other leftovers from way back who have yet to learn that Joint Sovereignty is supposed to safeguard their freedoms and cultures. Old paranoias cling exceedingly tight. Old political dogmas cover petty warlordism. This is our pissing ground. Ours. Ours. ‘There’s word that the gang bosses are looking for them. They’re paying top dollar for any Outsider gadgetry they can get their hands on, if it doesn’t blow their hands right off them first.’

  ‘You think there could be terrorist involvement?’ Willich asks.

  ‘It’s a theory,’ Ian Cochrane says. He pokes at the computer. ‘Jesus, how is this thing supposed to work?’

  ‘You stick it up your nose,’ Littlejohn says. ‘Shian technology is largely based around information-carrying chemicals. With humans, sight is the pre-eminent sense; with the Shian, it’s smell. So, if you have to interview any Shian, don’t wear aftershave or strong perfume. It’s the equivalent of wearing a mask. Disguising your identity. Better still, get me to do it. I know these people’s languages, verbal and physical. There are gestures and expressions in human non-verbal communication that are at best insulting in Shian body language, at worst an outright challenge. You’ll be needing help with these people.’

  He has just pitched for a retainer, Roisin Dunbar marvels. Five dead Outsiders at his feet, two of them kids, for God’s sake, and
Dr Robert Littlejohn is pushing for a consultancy.

  ‘A simpler theory is that it’s some Outsider feud, one clan blowing away another,’ Roisin Dunbar says.

  Littlejohn is wearing a look of superiority.

  ‘For a start, they aren’t clans. They’re Nations: semi-geographical social units. There are a thousand of them, most older than the pyramids. They have ancient and complex cultures; they build starships, colonize other worlds. They are not the Mafiosi. And for second, it’s physiologically impossible for a Shian to have committed these murders.’

  He waits for a leading question, a How so? an Oh really? He doesn’t get one.

  ‘What’s the first thing you notice about the Shian? They all look the same. Boys look like girls, girls look like boys, no external gender identifiers, all the naughty bits neatly tucked away behind decorous little flaps of skin and they only pop out once the season comes. The guys can even suckle young. But this is just whitewalls and chrome fins, just trimming; where it really matters is in here.’ He waves a finger at his forehead. ‘They don’t have the strong-man, weak-woman set-up that is the absolute foundation of human society. There’s no possibility of physical strength being equated with sexual domination. They have no concept of dominance or submission, no concept of sexual violence. A male Shian hits a female, she hits him back every bit as hard. Even better, it’s all chemicals with these people. Sex is entirely moderated by chemicals; changes in daylight trigger the hormones that kick the Shian into kesh, but also, when they actually do get down to having sex with each other, it’s governed by a series of pheromones exchanged between males and females. She can’t lubricate without a male pheromone, he can’t have an erection without a female pheromone. It’s all some evolutionary adaptation to make sure that if you only have sex twice a year you’re blooming well going to conceive, but from the human point of view it makes rape impossible. They don’t even have the concept. The idea of it horrifies them. No sexual violence, no rape. Tell me, what do you see here? An entire family, murdered. Look at the way they were killed; look at the way the adults’ hands are folded; tidy. Obsessive. Ritual. Look at the way the killer mutilated the bodies.’

  Barbara Hendron stands up, wipes her fingers on her plastic suit. Ten red wounds on the white vinyl.

  ‘The male and female sexual organs were excised immediately after death. I’d say some jagged-edged weapon. The usual hunting knife, commando knife sort of thing. You can get them in the Scout Shop. We found three piles of charred biological material underneath the window in the back room.’

  ‘The, ah, organs?’ Willich asks.

  ‘Maser set on grill for thirty seconds,’ Littlejohn says.

  I really don’t like your bloodthirsty humour, Roisin Dunbar thinks. Pathologists, SOCOs, even we are allowed to make bloody jokes, because we make our livings out of this stuff and it’s how we stop it crawling into the back seats of our cars and riding home with us and creeping up the stairs to sit on our pillows at night, staring at us. But you make your living out of knowing things about people, things you’ve got out of books and off screens and from libraries, and our jokes turn sick in your mouth. In fact, Roisin Dunbar thinks, I really don’t like you at all.

  ‘Mutilation, ritual killing, and the clincher: the kids. Protecting the children is the primal law of Shian society. The third one there was probably on her way to the kids when the killer got her.’

  ‘Her?’ Dunbar asks.

  ‘You get to recognize the details. The point is that no Shian could have done this. Their physiology makes the kind of psychosis evident in this crime impossible. No, a human did this. A human male. A single, unattached, human male, under-socialized, bit of a loner, on the edge of society. Classic serial killer profile.’

  There’s an altercation at the door. Uniforms are politely but firmly holding back a short, bulky man with a near-bald head. He is dressed in a French Nouvelle Vague leather jacket, and is wet through. He’s shouting about working here, his friends.

  ‘Get him out of here,’ Willich orders. The uniforms struggle him down the hall into the street. ‘Who the hell was that?’

  ‘Andy Gillespie,’ Littlejohn says. ‘He does work here; the Harridis took him on last November. I’ve seen him on a couple of occasions, but not socially. I don’t know exactly what it is he’s supposed to do, but he does, unfortunately, speak even more perfect Narha than I. I think he must have had access to a souljok at some time.’

  ‘A what?’ Willich asks.

  ‘An instant language chemical. I told you everything about these people is chemical; that’s how they all learned English overnight. Turn the language into tailored chemicals and snort them up your nose. I suppose if you were of a picturesque turn of mind you could think of it as a kind of super-snot.’

  Ian Cochrane laughs out loud at that.

  ‘Cochrane, find out about this Gillespie,’ Willich says. ‘Rosh, go and talk to him. Get his story. And give him back his tinnies. What’s in the other bag?’

  ‘Aspirins, boss.’

  Willich frowns.

  ‘They do it for them,’ Littlejohn says.

  ‘Would you mind continuing this little conversation in the hall?’ Barbara Hendron says, waving in a bag team. ‘We’re about to take them out and I wouldn’t want anything to leak or rub off on to your good coats. And you know what forensics are like if you muss up their lovely scene of crime. Pack of anal retentives, the lot of them.’

  A team is on its way upstairs to break open the private quarters and pick and sniff through the furnishings of lives.

  ‘You recognized Gillespie,’ Willich says to Littlejohn. ‘So you knew the victims?’

  ‘I’d met them several times, professionally. These are not, let’s say, your average Outsiders.’

  ‘How not average?’

  ‘The Harridis are the largest and most powerful of the Shian Nations in Ireland; and the Welcome Centre Hold held the most powerful Harridis. They’d been in negotiation with the British Northern Ireland Office and the Irish Joint Sovereignty Ministry about setting up a political organization to represent all Shian. Their policy was for much closer integration between Shian and human societies, economies, political and legal systems.’

  ‘So the killer has knocked over the Shian equivalent of Peter Robinson, or John Hume, or McIvor Kyle? Jesus fucking Christ. This is a bloody fucking mess. The Northern Ireland Office, Dublin and the bloody Outsiders are going to be sitting on me for a quick result.’

  ‘Serial killers never yield a quick result.’

  ‘I know this, Littlejohn. What worries me is the backlash when the news gets out. And it will. I saw that wanker Fitzhugh from the Newsletter out there sniffing around like a squaddie in a brothel, and I’m sure his mates from the Telegraph and the Irish News and the Irish Times are out there keeping him company. They put it out that it’s Outsiders killed with an Outsider weapon, and it’ll be bloody Independence Day and War of the Worlds combined by morning. Look, I’m taking a risk here, but I’m putting you on the pay-roll as Outsider adviser, whatever the fuck you call it.’

  ‘Try “Xenological Consultant”.’

  ‘If I could pronounce it. I need you to run interference for us, give interviews, go on the news, tell what you told us, that it’s biologically impossible for the killer to be an Outsider. Keep the peace while we look for the real boy. Right?’

  ‘How much?’

  Willich rolls his eyes in the way that says, there are five bodies being zipped into black butyl rubber bags in there, and a gentle dew of vaporized brain all over a late Victorian living room, and you are talking money? But before these thoughts can make it to his throat Tracey Agnew comes in to tell him what she’s got from the Outsider outside. She wraps her coat close around her very bright exercise gear.

  ‘His name’s Ongserrang something or other. I can’t pronounce these Outsider names. He’s in from Iceland, on his wanderjahr, you know, travelling around. He’s eleven, could you believe it? He had an a
ppointment here this evening; the Harridis were going to fix him up with a new Hold or something, find him a place to stay the night. He’s kind of worried that he doesn’t have anywhere to stay. He turns up at the allotted time, finds the outside door open, thinks nothing of it, goes in, finds the inner door open too, thinks, what a nice trusting welcoming place that they can leave their doors unlocked with humans around, and walks into that.’

  ‘Do you want me to talk to him?’ Littlejohn asks. ‘He might say more in his own language.’

  Willich sighs. It’s a very dry, tired sigh, like a man makes who has seen far too much of what no one should have to see, and doesn’t want to have to see any more but the world isn’t kind that way.

  ‘We’ll get a statement off the poor bastard in the morning. Great welcome to Ulster this is. Find him a hotel, book him in, tell him we’ll pick him up in the morning. Eleven years old. Would you send your kids off on their travels at eleven? These people.’

  Now it’s Ian Cochrane. He’s looking pleased. He’s looking like a man who’s cracked it.

  ‘Our boy Gillespie,’ he says. ‘I managed to open the computer and get his address. I checked with our database and surprise, surprise, Mr Andy Gillespie has form. Three years in the Maze for conspiracy to murder. Interesting case; he was the driver in a botched assassination on a drugs dealer over on the Newtownards Road. Mountpottinger had been tipped off, our lads were waiting for them. You might remember it, it was the one wee Skidoo McGann got knocked over; we put Big Maun Patterson in a wheelchair.’

  ‘This rings a bell. It was the day the Outsiders came, wasn’t it?’