Omphalos

by Gerald Lynch

  “But earlier Chief Thu he said —”

  Kevin groaned unintelligibly, an animal noise.

  Chapter 22

  18:30 and Sergeant Brigid Ertelle was doing a convincing damsel in distress: flying from the operations room and flitting down the hallway to the security table with hands to her cheeks, breathless in a voice an octave above her normal: “Eddy, hurry, there’s a riot outside! A biker riot! They’ve got Bob and Chief Thu surrounded!”

  Bob, the lanky guard, had gone for the coffee, as one of them did every day at 18:25. Eddy hardly paused to regret the tuna-on-rye he’d dropped on the table. Partners are partners and Frank had become a much-loved chief. So Eddy was into the elevator with the doors closing on his shout, “You’re in charge of security, Ertelle! Watch my sandwich!”

  Just inside the ajar door of the operations room, Kevin clenched a fist at his chest and whispered, “God bless you, Snake.”

  He hurried out to Ertelle, who had swept the table clean, pasting the sandwich to the pimply wall opposite. She pressed the button to recall the elevator and turned to Kevin.

  “You know Frank’ll have our badges.”

  “Frank’s involved in a cover-up, and worse. Again, go home, Sergeant Ertelle. I’m ordering you out now.”

  “I’m already an old hand at disobeying orders, why quit now? How’d you get that bruise on your cheek?”

  “I goaded a street-mime into punching me.”

  “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. But seriously, we should reconsider —”

  “Shut up.”

  She snatched her breath and faced the elevator LED. “Shut up yourself, Beldon.”

  When the elevator doors opened, Ertelle held them as Kevin hurried to the far end of the metal security table. With hands and thighs he shoved it into the elevator till it butted up against the back wall. Ertelle let go and the doors closed on the table, opened, closed, bumped open…

  “Thanks, I could never have managed that by my —”

  “They’ll be coming up the shaft on retractables,” she said, “weapons primed.”

  “How long do you figure? Or they could use that new Humjet and break through the windows of DeLint’s office.”

  “Not without first disabling the SWISS in there, and that would take Frank some time. So the elevator, and fifteen, maybe twenty minutes tops.”

  “Maybe twenty-five, if we add for how long it’ll take Frank to twig to the diversion. But you’re right: a troop of real security, mean boys and girls, is gonna come tearing out of this elevator like bats out the devil’s arse.”

  Ertelle blew air, plucked her white shirt from her front and fluttered it. Kevin was breathing hard, and looked away when he realized he was staring at her chest.

  She blushed a touch. “What happened to the air in this place? We’d make some action team, Detective Beldon.”

  Nothing.

  He said, “Stay here and shout like you’re trying to help but do whatever you can to obstruct them. Don’t move the table. When they break through, act hysterical; scream that Beldon has lost his mind. Okay?”

  “No.”

  “No? I’ve got no time for this, Sergeant.”

  “I’ve got a better plan. You stay here screaming hysterically that Ertelle has lost her mind.”

  “Okay, but you must do as I say.”

  “Kevin, are you all right? Frank called about your son, about Bill, and I’m —”

  “Twenty-four minutes and forty-five seconds to go now, tops.”

  “Kevin, did I do or say something? Was it wrong for me to wait here? Frank threatened —”

  “Come on. What you’re thinking is irrelevant, that’s all. You’re the best, Brigid.”

  He took off down the hall ahead of her.

  Although driving rain paradiddled the two walls of PANOGLAZ in DeLint’s office, it disappeared as instantly with enhanced clarity to show a lowering sky brooding on the surrounding low-rises of Ottawa like a voracious thing long restrained. The room, no longer chilled, was suffused in the blue light of a site being shut down. All evidence — the carnage, the desk — had been removed to the labs. In the exact centre of the ceiling, looking as innocent as security cams, were the two SWISS guards back-to-back, whose presence was not procedure at a site being shut down. Near the far corner hung the black spiral staircase like the devil’s own dreadlock.

  Making a beeline for it, Kevin said, “I’m going up first, it may need to be forced.” His voice reverberated in the bare room. “I don’t know the status of our SWISS friends; they could be on us as soon as they communicate with MYCROFT.”

  “Let me go first, I know karate.”

  He didn’t pause as the room turned ruby and the SWISS guards woke from standby and started circling each other tightly in opposite directions. Kevin was at the top of the stairs, a little dizzy from the turning, and she was at his feet. The colour rose in his face as he crouched and jammed awkwardly at the trapdoor with the fingers of both hands, and the door only jiggled. He scoped its perimeter and stopped at the key pinhole. He drew down his left hand a good foot and with its heel punched where the deadbolt should be — the trapdoor leapt and banged back into place.

  He lifted the door as he hurried up the last steps, inserting himself into what felt like a black oven. Instantly he was in the smothering nightmare again, squeezing into unknown darkness, pursued by…but Brigid had his back. He stepped onto a straight iron ladder that continued upward into darkness for a couple of metres, and at its top he must push through yet another trapdoor, this one unlocked but made of heavy metal, then upward a few more rungs into eerie twilight. Before stepping off he peered down. It wasn’t just his nightmare claustrophobia — the passage was a narrow tube, and Brigid would never make it if the SWISS were on high alert, which they —

  Ertelle yelped as she and Kevin locked hands on each other’s wrists; in one heave he lifted her into the room and slammed down the bellium door, through which he heard the high hum of cutting begin. He went to one knee and in the poor light of the Dome examined where the SWISS had burned her, beginning around the calves of her tan slacks, where just the material was scorched, but by the back of the knees the guards had been firing with intent; the cloth on the backs of her thighs was in ribbons and the skin showed red lashings like whip lines. Another half-second and she’d have lost a leg at the hip, then the other.

  He looked up at her. “You’re okay,” knowing she couldn’t be. The echo was like shouting into a barrel. He stared at the trapdoor. “It looks like they’ve been authorized to pursue with intent. Thank God security had been stepped down or we’d never have made it to the ceiling. And thank God for bellium steel; it’ll hold off even the SWISS.”

  “I’m okay, but your concern is touching, partner.” She turned away and walked into the room, stumbled, grew steadier as she proceeded.

  Kevin straightened and looked all around…and found nothing in the strange space. The atmosphere was muggy enough to raise instant sweat, but the legendary Dome was simply a big empty room. The actual dome was not solid copper but included numerous small areas of green-tinted glass, so that the air was as greenish as the room below was reddish, if a dark jade this stormy evening. The floor area was large, but the space above was just not as vaulted by the dome as the outside view had led him to expect. Nothing else appeared to view: no divider, no hidden half of a room to discover. Nothing…save a small elevation, a legless desk it looked, sitting in the centre of the room.

  “No,” he said, bringing massaging thumb and fingers to his temples. But nothing came of that factioning trigger either.

  “What?” Ertelle answered in the echoing distance. She was already walking the perimeter, her eyes on the floor, doing her own scan, ghostly in her white shirt. “Looks like someone got here ahead of us and cleaned the place out. Why don’t you investigate the lump in the centre
there, Kevin.”

  Concentrate.

  But there was no way ahead here, and no way back through the trapdoor to DeLint’s office, as the SWISS guards would surely kill them. He froze. He was cooking. He was having trouble breathing. It was like being shrink-wrapped for his own coffin. He had made the mistake of his career, of a lifetime. Because this case had been bound up with his life and career forever and a year now. How much time did they have left? Fifteen, twenty minutes tops. How could a life come down to that? Perfectly, that’s how. Just fucking perfectly. Then it came down to less. Then nothing. Show’s over.

  He raised his voice only a little but it came like shouting: “Ertelle, at what level will the SWISS defend the room below?”

  She didn’t pause in her examination of the floor, but spoke to her pacing feet: “Functional disable, would be my guess. To go for the kill, they require top-priority command. Frank will have his trusty tablet linking to MYCROFT, but he has to be on-site and procedure won’t allow our one-and-only chief to enter a site under high alert along with the first wave of security. So I’d say, at the most twenty minutes before Frank can command MYCROFT to prompt the little buggers to disable with intent. A lot depends on how fast Frank twigs, as you said, and just what he’s protecting, and how much he loves us, or hates us now. But you cannot seriously be thinking of going back down, Kevin — you do not want these laser lashings, and they’re only warning shots!” She moved to rub the backs of her thighs but changed her mind.

  Absently he walked towards the low-lying lump at the centre of the Dome. The room felt like a pillaged cathedral. The object was not a desk but a dark slab like a low altar, not rectangular but oval-shaped, with something embossed on its top. A face, a matronly female face. One word was carved into the slab’s top:

  MOTHER

  Below the face, scrawled writing in what looked like chalk:

  They fuck you up, your mum and dad

  That stamped a quizzical frown on Kevin, whose whole face continued to furrow.

  “Nothing so far.” Ertelle startled him coming up behind. “Christ, what is this, a shrine to Mother DeLint? What’s the graffiti say?… Tch-tch. Talk of your conflicted Oedipal boy!” She gestured at the dome with uplifting arms as might some high priestess: “Is that what the legendary Dome, DeLint’s Button, is all about, a homage to Mother? Hey, I’ll bet this is the little stage he was standing on in that last vid we viewed!”

  Still frowning, he said, “Randome…Dr. Randome quoted that same line to me. Said it was poetry.”

  “Then I guess that’s another thing, along with hypnosis, Dr. Randome taught DeLint. But if that’s part of Randome’s so-called bibliotherapy, no thank you. And if that’s poetry, then give me e-Hallmark cards any day.”

  “No, it’s not…that.” As Kevin talked, increasingly it was to himself. “The handwriting looks familiar… I know: it’s the Widower’s! I made that scrawl from the Widower’s handwritten suicide quotes. Remember them? And neither this nor the suicide quotes are in DeLint’s fine fancy hand, which I know from his notes in McNicol’s manuscript… But that’s impossible! DeLint has to be…I wish we had a tablet, the eye can lie. I should have run a comparative analysis of the penmanship when I first saw DeLint’s notes in McNicol’s manuscript. We had the suicide quotes in the Widower’s hand! Dear Jesus, Frank was right without knowing it: there was key evidence in McNicol’s manuscript. The writings wouldn’t have matched, and that would have eliminated…De…Lint. Shit and triple shit!”

  Ertelle brightened like a child. “Hey, do you think Mummy DeLint’s mummified remains could be inside this?”

  When he realized she was talking to him, he stiffened. “I dunno. Truth is we’ve come to a dead end, Sergeant Ertelle. And I’m getting a sick sick feeling I’ve made a monstrous mistake — a great big whopper of a fat factioning fuck-up!”

  “What? We have to case the entire floor. I’ve made one circuit already. Now we tighten it. Procedure. There must be something somewhere.” She gently touched the backs of her thighs and gestured c’mon with raised eyebrows and tipped head.

  “Just shut up, will you!” His voice boomed round the room like a series of doors slamming.

  “Partner, dire as matters look at present, I don’t think there’s any call —”

  “Will you please shut the fuck up, Sergeant Ertelle, for once in your fucking life!”

  She stiffened and pulled back. “Kevin, maybe you should —”

  “Look around, for fuck’s sake! Nothing’s hidden, there’s nowhere to hide! This ain’t the fucking Hardy Boys, Trixie Beldon! The floor’s as solid as my fucking skull!” With both fists he rapped himself hard on the front of the head, punching himself actually. Continued:

  “We’ve been lured into an empty trap! The only bait needed was in this fucked-up head of mine!” He again smashed his head. “And this fucking case, DeLint’s murder, the Widower case, my wife’s death, my son’s murder — my whole fucking life is officially fucking over, do you understand that, Sergeant Ertelle? Case closed! If I carried, I’d stick it in my mouth and join Bill and Cyn right now!”

  He leered upward into the green vault of the dome, calmed alarmingly. “I mean, look at us, trapped perfectly like a pair of snot-nosed constables under a green cup; can’t escape, and nowhere to go anyway…unless I go back down…”

  He took a step towards the hissing trapdoor. She blocked his way. He wouldn’t go round her. She reached with her right hand and he cocked his left fist at his chin.

  “I mean it, Ertelle, I’ll break your sorry excuse for a face.”

  But in a move like striking she had his cocked arm pressed to his side while with her right hand she clasped the back of his neck and pulled him to her. He struggled but couldn’t break the hold.

  “You shut up, Kevin Beldon. I’m a black belt, didn’t I tell you? There’s no way you can get out of this without breaking your own neck — don’t try it!” She forced his weakly resisting head to her shoulder. “Besides,” she said quietly, “didn’t you say a street performer was able to beat you up?”

  She was so strong, yet he heard her crying, the weak woman, the mother-wannabe. So for her sake he stopped struggling, which hadn’t been much anyway, or of much use… Ah but no, not Ertelle, he was the one crying, making mewling noises then gasping like a shameless child, his whole body shivering like shucking the remnants of some moulted skin.

  Or wait: she was crying too. What had he done now? What was he guilty of again to make some woman so miserable? Something he’s forgotten. It was there like an illumination slowly expanding ahead then all around him. He could even remember the salty taste of it, the mingled sweat and tears licked from the corners of his mouth when it had actually happened, and again when he’d come awake that night from dreaming it alone in a darkened room. It was here again now at his wide-awake ear, like a moist whisper welling up from an old repeating dream, a dream that he’d always forget till he had it again, and then remember it only within the dream. And now, in this strange daydreaming nightmare in a green dome, awake for once, he remembered it well.

  He’s twelve and his mother, Mammy, is hugging him fiercely, after the funeral at Clearview Cemetery where neither rabbi nor priest would preside, and where there was no interment. It had been a cremation fit only for a stray animal. Her hand also holds the back of his head, though she has to reach up, and there’s paper rustling there, the letter from his father that she’d worried in her hands throughout the minimal service. His father had drunk himself to death, as intentional as any suicide, and cursed the world with his every word. But the letter, found tucked away in the old man’s chumash, a family heirloom, offered the love he wished he’d been able to show them, and asked for their forgiveness. Too long hidden, that father’s love, too well, and too late.

  Fierce Mammy, surprisingly strong too, had held him tightly in the only love he’d known before Cyn, pressing h
im to herself. I’m not letting you go, son, not till you tell me you forgive your father. We’ll stand here forever if that’s what it takes, but you are not carrying that hate out into the world like ashes in your heart. It’d be the death of you.

  It had taken all his strength to break her hold, to push her off, to hurt her, so he could breathe, and run. But she had never let go. From deep within she held on and insisted in his dreams, and all she talked of was love.

  Now he hugged her back, held her close. You always knew, Mammy. With you, no sin in those you loved was too great to forgive. With you no one had to pay for love, or its lack. No one has to, no more.

  “I’m a stupid, pitiable old man, one who went from never crying to turning it on like a big baby. Soon I’ll be watching Macro all day with boxes of milk chocolates and tissues on a side table, sending e-Hallmark cards to strangers in cute stories.”

  Ertelle snorted it up. “Do I detect gender crime, Detective Beldon? But will you stop already with the old-man routine, you’re only fifty-five.”

  “In an adult diaper, watching soaps all day wearing a Trustee ManWrap.”

  “Shit happens.”

  “You’ll make the perfect mother.”

  “You were right before, we have no time for this.” But she didn’t move away.

  He felt her laboured breathing, leaned back and cupped her shoulder blades. He whispered, and it was like the whole dome speaking: “Will you quit when you have the baby?”

  “Your factioning has lost much credibility lately, Detective Beldon.”

  “Will you?”

  “Shouldn’t we be covering the entire floor? The way the MYCROFT bots do it? Routine, procedure, always — another thing you’ve taught me. Isn’t that what this moment calls for?”

  “Will you?”

  “That’s still a big if. My OBG says that at this pace I’ll never conceive.”

  “Will you?