People in Season

by Simon Fay

  Missing her cue, she simply replies, ‘Well I’m not.’

  And all he could say to that is she is. But he can’t. He doesn’t even know if he believes it. Incapable of convincing either she nor he of anything, Francis holds his arms up and lets them drop to his side.

  ‘You don’t put a murderers lover on trial, do you? And I didn’t even sleep with him. All I did was try to get to know him better. Oh I forgot, this must mean I’m UPD, that I’d let the world burn to get a kick out of it,’ she says, cynical.

  ‘Yes!’ he screams, struck by the feeling that they’re talking in different languages. ‘That’s the general idea. You don’t give a damn about any of us. About me!’

  ‘You don’t believe that,’ she says, hurt.

  His head shakes weakly in response. It’s a feeble reaction but he can’t think of a rebuttal, when really, all he has to say is, ‘I do.’ He doesn’t even have to believe it. The statement is not one to be considered. It’s a deflection designed to give him space until he can think about it privately. They’re stood in the empty street, considering each other tiredly. He falters again under her determination by breaking eye contact.

  ‘You don’t,’ she spots the chink in his armour. It’s as much of a revelation to her as it is to him. ‘You don’t think I should be punished but you’re going to anyway.’

  ‘It’s not punishment,’ he says, holding up the fact like a shield. ‘It’s the law.’

  ‘The law,’ she repeats, swiping the shield away.

  Lost in the street he clearly knows, Francis can’t get his baring. Blindfolded and spun around, he’s being pushed left and right. Taking the cover off now, he notices a post box, and disoriented, he spots the door to his building, the paint peeled off in chips. If only he could get inside and lock her out. All he has to do is stomp up the steps and go in. She wouldn’t follow him, surely? It might as well be on the other side of Ireland for all the distance he sees between him and his flat. If only the landlord would come out and swat the woman away. Francis could shout up to him, ask to be rescued. Instead, he fingers the keys in his pocket. They jingle as considers a run for it. He can slip in and slam it before she knows what’s happening. So why does he feel trapped? What is it in the woman that has a hold on him? Ava reads his mind.

  ‘This is where you live.’ She points to the bottle he holds. ‘Is that the drink you owe me? Chilean, just like I said.’

  Discovering the bottle in his hand, it’s as if he’s only just found it. Francis backtracks to figure out where it had come from. Remembering that he’d left the flat to do some shopping, he wonders where all the groceries he bought have gone to, and then, oh yes, he sees them scattered on the floor of the supermarket. At a loss for what to do, he looks right into what he’s been trying to escape.

  ‘It’s cold out here, and I heard there might be a flash riot tonight,’ Ava says. ‘Let’s sit down with a drink inside, where it’s safe. It doesn’t have to be like it’s been, this silly argument. We can chat about it till the trouble passes, alone together, can’t we?’

  Dizzy, he’s trying to see something he can’t quite make out, something under that iridescent skin she wears. It’s frightful as a ghost but he’s drawn to its purity nonetheless. Leaning forward to get a better view, he almost falls, but manages to catch himself. She tries to make him focus on her but as he answers her, he continues to speak from faraway.

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  She steps closer. ‘It’s my life.’

  ‘Nobody’s taking that from you.’

  Another step. ‘They are if I can’t work where I want.’

  ‘There are other jobs,’ he says quietly.

  Her hand goes up to his arm. Hypnotised, he doesn’t think to wrench her off.

  ‘This is my career and you are going to take it away from me. You’re going to convict me for being good at my work. For a law you know isn’t right. You think it isn’t something that can just be forgotten. You’re all wrapped up in it, bowing down to some imaginary concept. But you can make a difference. You can let me pass. Things can change.’

  ‘This isn’t how things get changed though.’

  ‘When the law goes this wrong it’s just a shared delusion. They’ve taken people and turned them into numbers, you can see that, surely. Oh no, damn the consequences, just do your job and protest against this turgid mess the slow way, meanwhile my life’s been devastated. Everything I’ve built is swept away because you don’t think my motivations worthy. Well damn you, Francis, you’re a coward. Hiding behind a title and a piece of paper.’

  He doesn’t hear her, petrified as he is.

  Seeing as much, Ava takes her chance, the final stab at Francis Mullen. He lets her hand move him toward the door of his building. His key goes into the lock, setting the springs and traps open. He forces himself to try and find what it is behind those eyes one more time. Is it loneliness that’s sparking desperately in her synapses? Believing that would be a foolish projection of emotions based on the only model he really knows – himself. No, it’s not loneliness that’s in her. If it can’t be cured, if the love offered can’t be understood and returned in kind then it is something altogether different. All he could give her is matter to be devoured and forgotten. Francis has a secret. He became a social agent because all of his life he’s been afraid. Something out there was so powerful that it’s pull on him was impossible to escape. Behind the title of his job he has had some protection from it, a constant reminder of the dangers it represented. In his work he has been granted the power of logic and reason, but with no tablet to hold between them now, he’s robbed of the certainty it lent, and pulled into the black of her eyes, he’s left with nothing but her grip to bolster him. Veering forward, he’s on the edge when he realises what it is he’s really feared all this time. With her hand guiding him, supported by the strength of a thousand, he’s forced to step off, and falls all the way into its infinite depths.

  CHAPTER 15

  The sound of rain, drumming lightly on the window in a chorus of pudgy toddler fingers, had pitter-pattered in his dreams throughout the night. As morning approached, the drizzle became a storm and announced itself with bursts of wind which intermittently pounded against the glass, half waking the two who dozed snugly in bed. In their drowsy state, they’d wrapped round each other all the more tightly. Feeling the woman’s finger nail writing suggestive notes on his chest now, the man’s mind is tempted closer to the surface, but it’s a shrill ringing sound that jolts him awake. Detective Dylan Wong’s eyes spring open like two traps set to trigger in unison and his wife, also snapped into reality, withdraws from him. The panicked seconds between recognising the disturbance and silencing it are an eternity for Dylan. It’s familiar and alien at the same time, that ringing set to a tune. He thinks he knows it but doesn’t remember hearing it in a long time. Laying motionless in bed, the light shade comes into focus, and steadily, he becomes aware of the room around him as he vaguely wonders if there’s a fire. No, it’s only his phone. His hand slaps about the nightstand until it lands on the device and he picks it up, thumbing aimlessly in the hopes that he can stop the inane ringtone. Succeeding, the chirpy tune is replaced by an equally irritating voice. Caustic, it greets him.

  ‘Good morning, Dylan.’

  Dylan attempts a greeting which comes out as an incomprehensible slur.

  ‘What?’ the voice asks.

  He swallows the bitter taste of morning and at once a picture of the world comes back together for him. His wife and he had been snuggling but she remembered they were fighting and turned to the wall. He’d been lucky to even have a place in the bed . The ringtone that had been playing was a children’s rhyme. The Teddy Bear’s picnic. He hadn’t set the phone to play it on receiving calls, but he has a good idea who might have.

  ‘I said,’ Dylan rolls over to plant his feet on the ground and speaks in halts to rid his mouth of marbles. ‘I said it’s my day off.’

  Shrunk in
to himself, he wonders if he was drinking, but remembers that they were in bed by eleven. Behind him, his wife has thrown on her robe and leaves a chill as she slides out of the room. Taking this call has not helped Dylan’s position.

  ‘You do it to yourself, Dylan,’ the voice needles.

  There’s a knot there, in the floorboard, stuck in the grain, unable to move. He knows what he’s going to hear. Half asleep, he imagines it coming from under the synthetic planks of wood.

  ‘You took lead. You went over the flat. You found a perfectly natural dead man and decided maybe it wasn’t perfectly natural. You got the autopsy results to show that, yes, he just had a bad heart. No-no, you insisted, look a little closer, I’ll buy you a beer. How could I decline the offer? You know I’m always parched for a drink. You took advantage. The system doesn’t allow for hunches you know. These tests cost money. If the bloods came back clear you’d have to have been pretty creative with your reasoning to justify it. But of course your luck won out. You’re making us look bad. And now...’

  ‘And now?’ Dylan asks.

  ‘And now you don’t have a day off.’

  Dylan lets out a good humoured groan. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Poison. I didn’t recognise it. Ran a quick search and found it’s connected to failed medical trials run by SimperP. They’re some company. Very powerful. It’s registered to them. Quite the innocuous little creation. It hides among white blood cells in the body and little by little congeals in the chest. It actually carries more oxygen than the standard white blood cell, but it clogs the arteries as it does it, unnoticed. Antibodies don’t have a chance to identify it until you’re already dead, and good investigators like ourselves mistake it for a consequence of genes and bad lifestyle, overworked as we are.’ The voices pauses. ‘I would say you’ve found something very interesting.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Dylan repeats.

  Still staring at the knot in the wood, the set glaze of his face gradually evaporates as he realises how deep a hole he’s dug for himself. He’s at the bottom of a pit with that dead body. Why couldn’t it have been a nobody? Just another loner who died with no-one to care for them. Or better yet, the fool could still be alive. He considers what a world without murders would be like. I’d be out of a job, is the most creative thought that comes to mind.

  ‘Interesting is not good,’ Dylan mumbles.

  ‘I eh, need to forward the results to the department chief,’ The voice apologises. ‘I figured I’d give you a heads up. Get some tea into you. You said this guy was an active agent in the UPD service? Where was he processing?’ When Dylan doesn’t say anything the voice goes on without him. ‘Well, wherever it was, this is going to get messy. When the service gets wind that their guy was killed on the job, while investigating... Jesus. First murder by an uncovered UPD?’ The voice whistles. ‘This is a real hot potato buddy.’

  ‘A real hot potato,’ he parrots the phrase.

  The voice tuts, aware it’s not being listened to. ‘Don’t forget about that drink you owe me.’

  Dylan is left with a long dial tone as he debates whether he should stay in bed.

  First lies were invented, then politics was. It will be twenty minutes before Dylan’s department chief gets the news. It will rocket up the chain to his desk, send him into a panic and have him ringing the UPD service offices. There’ll be a ten minute talk, quick phrases of condolence, a self conscious back and forth about publicity trouble, political consequences, the committees that will be formed, people breathing down necks. The chief will assure the other end of the line that it’s under control, say that his best men are on the case, hang up, check the file to see who’s got lead, and curse himself when he see’s it’s Dylan Wong. Then Dylan’s phone will ring. All in all, half an hour will have passed. That’s a thirty minute lie in until he has to deal with the world.

  Shouting good morning, his son appears at the bedroom door, delighted, and springs at him, jumping onto the bed to crawl on top of his father and place tiny hands on stubbly lips. ‘Breakfast time!’

  Flinching at the scream, Dylan twists onto his belly and presses his face into the mattress as he feels his son crawl around him. With a few more shouts and some childish slaps to the back, Dylan is brought to life and shouts, ‘Alright! Away we go!’ Hoisting his son onto his back, he walks into the kitchen to sit the boy down on a chair, and taking one beside him, he’s sat at the table in his underwear.

  ‘Good sleep?’ his wife, stood at the cooker, surprises him by talking.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been unconscious for a decade,’ Dylan replies. ‘Was I having nightmares last night? Tossing and turning?’

  ‘You were like a log. I tried pushing you away from me when your arm took over my side but there was no budging.’

  Considering an apology, he decides it won’t be worth much to her now. He rubs his hands over his face, trying to rid himself of the feeling of too much sleep as she places a mug of tea in front of him.

  ‘Cheers.’

  His wife is busying herself at the sink, shuffling dishes about into piles with no real aim to organise them. The fridge motor is humming quietly and stops. A dog barks a stone’s throw away, in the neighbours garden. His son is sucking on the straw of a juice carton, contently ignorant, enjoying an altogether different kind of silence.

  ‘Are you all set for today?’ Dylan’s wife asks him in a patronising tone which he understands is as much for the benefit of their child as it is a poke at him. She knows that he won’t be following through on their plans, that the job has called, and so that, as he so often says, is that. She goes on anyway. ‘I found your swimming trunks at the bottom of the wash basket so we won’t need to buy a pair.’

  Dylan gives her a long sigh. He’s mulling over whether he should tell her now or wait until the chief rings, make a charade of it and pretend he’s surprised – argue with him maybe, in front of her, that it’s his day off. Put on a good show. The chief would like that. But she’s already read the meaning of his sigh and turns her back on him. Strained now, she watches a puddle dance in their garden.

  ‘Today was important,’ she says, her voice unchanged, though the sound of the dishes she’s moving in the sink get louder. ‘It’s not just a swim.’

  ‘I know,’ Dylan agrees meekly. ‘The job. It is what it is.’

  Their son has noticed the change between them. Like a dark cloud passing over a sunny day, he sees all their plans disappear. The shade stretches from one parent to the other, and though he knows they’re not going swimming now, he thinks that maybe, if he finishes breakfast without a peep, things will work out in his favour.

  ‘We said we’d make more of an effort. You said that.’

  ‘I need to get out of homicide. We have to wait on the paperwork. They’ll put me in an office somewhere. I’ll push them to get a move on,’ he says, attempting to sound enthusiastic. Aware that he hasn’t actually put in the request form yet, his voice falters in the try. ‘This is just paying up front. After that it’s a desk, nine to five, and every weekend off till the pension comes in.’

  No acknowledgement is given him. She has heard this line of reasoning many times in the past. Hugging her from behind, Dylan finds she becomes an icicle at his touch. Then the Teddy Bears Picnic plays again. It’s the chief. His apologies are ignored and he walks away, into the sitting room to keep his family from overhearing the discussion.

  ‘You get the good news?’

  Finding a creek in his neck, Dylan arches his body.

  ‘You’re killing me with this, Wong,’ the chief grumbles. He hears the sound of the man’s big ape fingers trying to type something on a keyboard. The chief, a short portly man with a patchy goatee, reminds Dylan of his old school principal. A bureaucrat, more concerned with keeping up appearances than doing any real work. The older he gets, the less he can stand this type. Really, it’s why he hates his job. ‘What made you ask for those bloods? You don’t have a reason on these forms, you just crossed out t
he question. This is a real middle finger to me. I should take it out of your pay. You’re lucky that guy was actually murdered.’

  ‘I guess that makes me the number one suspect.’

  ‘Believe me, I wish you were.’

  ‘Alright, dock my pay and we can go back to pretending he died of natural causes.’

  ‘Don’t give me that shite.’

  ‘It’s my day off, by the way.’

  ‘Do you know how many people are going to be on us about this? You’re going to pay for it, one way or another. You got our nose stuck into something bad this time.’

  ‘I’m not the one who killed him,’ Dylan says lazily.

  ‘This is a real hot potato,’ the chief says. ‘My phone hasn’t stopped ringing. I was supposed to have a game of golf this morning.’

  ‘Well, just keep everyone out of my hair and I’ll do the best I can.’

  Dylan winces at the sound of laughter that assaults his ear.

  ‘Out of your hair? We already had a team out by North Circular road canvassing for witnesses. Nothing, not a peep from anyone. Like they’ve all gone back into their holes and are just waiting for us to disappear.’

  This is becoming a headache. ‘Teams of cops will have that affect on people. You should have let me canvas alone. I’m going to have to go back anyway.’

  ‘It’s a tough life, eh? Some things are out of our control now. Sooner or later it’s going to be news. Under the public gaze. What’s that they say about observation changing the subject? We can’t just investigate, we have to do it in style, and we have to do it quickly, and we have to work with every arsehat who thinks they know how to solve a case.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘And that means working with the UPD service,’ the chief presses. ‘I have a meeting with their department head in five minutes. He’s waiting over the way as we speak.’

  Stood by his curtains, Dylan watches the hanging sheet of rain. Across the road the Sullivan’s are making runs to and from their car, packing it for a holiday. The worst thing any of them has to worry about is whether their puppy will be okay in the neighbour’s care. Beyond them, the hive of families sprawl, each living in their cell, going about identical lives, having identical thoughts. Even this dull impression that Dylan feels isn’t one anybody else hasn’t had – the housing estate, buried away in a lifeless nook past Lucan, is a nursery for those who won the coin toss. If it wasn’t for his job, Dylan would never see the city at all.