by K. C. Finn
Kendra grins. “Are you kidding?” She thumps her chest happily. “It’d take more than that to smash me up.”
“Hmm,” Cae begins. “Especially when you’ve got a mug like me to cushion your fall.”
Her dark face drops a little then. “Sorry,” she replies, wiping her mouth of some more stray blood.
“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” pipes Redd angrily.
Cae manages a half-turn to finally look at the conman in the corner, and he is most disappointed to see that he is indeed uninjured. The only thing that has well and truly been attacked is his attire; what had started out as an elegant white shirt is now a brown waistcoat, torn fully open at the front and caked in dirt and grime. Redd is busying himself trying to clean the dirt off his chest with his pale jacket, or at least what’s left of it.
“Where’s the other half of that?” Cae asks, noting the once beautiful jacket now only has one sleeve. Redd just points to the exit of the chute, and Cae turns to see the half-jacket hanging by its ruined lapel on a jagged rock just under the end of the slide.
“This is not good,” mutters Kendra, who is still walking around the small space, surveying the stone walls. “This wall is solid. There’s no exit.”
“Fabulous,” adds Redd flatly. “From one dungeon to another. Is there no end to your talent for trouble, Rex?”
“Shut your mouth before I shut it for you,” Kendra snaps, rounding on Redd Richmond angrily. “This isn’t his fault. You’re the one who said the information was good. You’re the one who blundered into the clock shop. You’re the one who-‘
“Kendra,” says Cae.
“What?” She bites back sharply.
“Shush,” he answers, holding his head wearily. “We’re not trapped.”
Redd makes a scoffing sort of sound. “I bow to your wisdom, oh great detective,” he sneers. “How, pray tell, did you come to this conclusion as we sit in a sealed, circular cell made of stone, with no exits, perhaps hundreds of metres underground?”
Cae reaches up to his face, peeling off the little droplet of dried wax on his cheek with a smile.
“If that description of yours is accurate,” the detective begins, looking up, “then where’s the person who lit those candles?”
The Clockworkers
21.
Not all pits are actually pits, some are oubliettes. As Cae, now fully rested after a good hour on the dirty floor, gets to his feet and cradles his fractured ribcage, he looks around the circular room again.
“It’s definitely an oubliette,” he says for what must be the third time.
“Any time you feel like telling us what one of those is, go right ahead,” drones Kendra.
“They look like traps, or dungeons, or death pits, but with one little difference,” Cae answers. “They have a hidden door.”
The detective starts feeling the wall with his gloved hands, fingers rounding the edges of every stone he can reach. Kendra begins to mimic him, albeit unenthusiastically.
“Even if there is a door,” she sighs with frustration. “It might only open from one side.”
“Which means someone could come and collect us any minute,” Cae replies positively.
“Except that we’ve already been in here an hour,” Redd says anxiously. Cae is surprised to find that the conman too is now searching the walls for gaps. “We could starve to death before the door opens.”
Cae shakes his head and carries on feeling around. “Someone has to know we’re here. The whole floor caved in at Wincher’s Clocks; who’s not going to notice that in the morning?”
“Boy, I wish I had your optimism,” Kendra remarks disappointedly, still handling the wall. “I had an appointment to keep this morning, too.”
“Oh?” Cae asks. “Where were you headed?”
Kendra’s dark lip curves awkwardly. “I’ll tell you if we ever get out,” she replies with half a hollow laugh.
“Tsk, tsk,” says Redd, coming to check the wall above where Kendra has just been. “So secretive. Not a good quality in a police chief, you know.”
“You being such a sound judge of good character and all,” Cae sneers as Kendra shoves Redd out of the way roughly.
The conman lets out a chuckle. “Tell me Kendra,” he continues unashamedly, “Were you this charming and genteel as a child too?”
Kendra pauses for a moment in her work.
“I have no idea,” she replies in a less confident tone.
“Pardon?” Cae asks, surprised. He and Redd also stop feeling the walls, turning simultaneously to look at the ex-solider.
“How can you not know what you were like as a child?” Redd asks incredulously.
“Because I don’t remember,” Kendra answers, her hazel eyes falling on Cae sheepishly. “I have no memory of anything before I was eighteen.”
For once Redd Richmond is silent, his greying eyebrows raised in surprise. Cae takes a few steps closer to Kendra, his blue eyes filling with concern.
“Why not?” He asks tentatively.
“It’s no big deal,” Kendra says briskly, suddenly turning away and trying to laugh it off. “I was brought into hospital from a car crash out in the middle of nowhere. I had head injuries, amnesia too, so there was no way to trace who I was or where I’d come from. That’s when the army took me in.”
“But your family,” Cae continues immediately. “Nobody came looking for you? Nobody came to claim you?”
The way Kendra’s broad shoulders tense tells Cae he has struck a nerve, and he immediately realises the tactlessness of his outburst. An awkward silence passes as she keeps her back to the detective. Redd whistles out a breath to break the mood.
“Perhaps you were an orphan,” he says cheerfully. “I’m an orphan, and it hasn’t done me any harm.”
“Shut up,” says Cae quickly, stepping round to see Kendra’s face, upon which is her usual steely, brave face. He smiles at her warmly.
“You’re a right mystery you are,” he soothes. “Perfect friend for a detective.”
Kendra smiles back slowly, punching Cae’s shoulder a little too hard.
“Be still my stomach,” snarks Redd from behind her, which he follows with a retching sort of noise and a sickly gesture.
And then Cae is certain that Kendra’s moment of sadness has passed, because she turns to the hapless conman with a dangerous glare that wipes the smarmy look off his dirty but handsome face.
“Now, don’t let’s get cabin fever,” Redd says carefully, holding up his hands defensively. “Being cooped up for ages like this, it could make us do things we’ll later regret.”
He starts to back away as Kendra advances on him, now smiling darkly.
“Oh, I don’t see how I could ever regret beating the hell out of you,” she remarks.
But at that moment the petty thief’s pitiful little body is spared a pummelling as Cae’s suspicions about the circular cell are finally confirmed. A door opens in the stone wall about six feet above where the three prisoners are standing, letting a little block of torchlight into the upper echelons of the room.
“Aha!” Cae exclaims. “It is an oubliette! Hello!” He calls out to the little door above them. “Hello? We’re down here!”
His cry is answered with only a thin rope ladder that comes down the wall from the door. No person is visible yet in the doorway. Kendra grabs Redd by his shoulder, shoving him forward to the ladder.
“Go ahead Richmond,” she bites. “Ladies first.”
22.
The person who threw down the rope ladder is no longer there when Caecilius Rex has climbed it. He finds only Redd and Kendra standing in a well-lit concrete corridor waiting for him. The corridor stretches ahead of them to another brightly lit doorway, from which the sound of conversation echoes towards Cae’s keen ears.
“Sounds like a lot of people,” Kendra whispers, indicating the path ahead.
“If they wanted to kill us, they would have left us in the oubliette,” Cae reasons.
Redd Richmon
d seems well placated by this comment, and nods confidently. “Right,” he says brightly, smoothing his wavy hair. “Winning smiles everyone. How do I look?”
“Like a trashcan vomited on you,” Kendra answers before moving off to the door.
Cae rather thinks it a shame that she misses the look of deep offence on the conman’s face. He turns to Cae with a moody curl in his lip.
“Well that’s nice, I must say,” Redd declares.
“Well that’ll teach you to dress for the situation in future,” Cae replies, smoothing out his own long black coat as he follows Kendra down the corridor.
When the young detective reaches the doorway, he is surprised to find that he is entering some sort of ceremonial hall. There is a fairly large gathering of people who are milling about, all dressed in identical clothes. On closer inspection, Cae finds the crowd are wearing sweaters and trousers in black, and every face is covered by a mask. Cae catches one of the masked faces with a start, amazed to find that he has seen them before.
The white plastic mask bears the familiar green eye slits and a grate where its mouth should be, as well as the same yellow markings that denote the cheek bones of the face. But most of all Cae remembers the marking on the forehead, which bears a large, red cog, like the inside of a clock. Three months has not been long enough to forget such a prominent symbol, especially not since the last mask-wearer Cae encountered had shot through a locked doorway and been heavily armed.
“Ah, Detective Rex, is it?” Says a man’s voice from somewhere at the front of the hall.
Every masked face turns to stare at Cae in a most disturbing fashion, and slowly the identical crowd members part like the tide, leaving a path for him and his companions to walk through. They are heading towards a small stage, where a single masked man stands alone.
“Please do come here,” says the voice again, and the man on the stage beckons in an oddly friendly gesture. His voice is not unkind, which puts Cae all the more on edge as he walks through the increasingly creepy crowd.
“Your masks,” Cae remarks as he reaches the stage. “I’ve seen one of your people before.”
“That’s right,” replies the man, helping Cae up onto the platform.
Slowly and very deliberately the man removes his mask, and though his plain face is not familiar, there is something in his dark features that reminds Cae of someone else.
“Forgive me,” the man adds, holding out a hand to be shaken. “My name is Archibald Watt. I believe you know my son.”
“Archie!” Cries Redd as he mounts the stage, pushing past Cae to take the man’s outstretched hand. “Long time no see, old boy.”
“Hello Reddrick,” replies Watt senior flatly, and Cae is pleased to find that he seems to hold the conman in contempt. “Still fleecing old ladies out of their pensions, are you?”
“Now, now,” Redd chides. “Don’t be bitter just because your mother got swindled.”
The men break hands, and as they do a flurry of something shiny suddenly bursts out of the crowd of masked people, who part with surprised murmurs. Cae turns, shocked to find it is a brilliantly polished robot unlike any that he has ever seen before. The frame of the bot is vaguely human, but it is terribly thin, with a tiny computer panel and large, long-fingered hands.
It is also running on clockwork.
Cae is shocked when the robot makes a beeline for him, suddenly grabbing at the detective’s waist with its menacing hands. Cae tries to jump out of its way but the bot pursues him until it has what it is looking for, which turns out to be the broken gas mask hanging from his belt. The clockwork creation takes the mask briskly in its iron grip and runs away with it back through the crowd.
“Sorry about that,” says Archie Watt. “If they see something broken, they have to fix it. It’s part of the programming.”
Cae just nods, remembering the cleaning androids at Dartley Station and their own relentless pursuit of their duties. But as he turns back to the man on the stage, Caecilius Rex has one of the experiences that have made him so renowned as a talented criminal catcher over the last few years. A flash of an image fills his mind, the sight of the long, strong fingers of that robot, clean of fingerprints or markings. Then another image floods his thoughts, this time of Li Ewan and the perfect, purple strangle marks around his neck, and then another vision of Spinner, the striations just the same.
And he knows now how the Watt family are involved in the murders.
23.
“Your robots are killing people,” Cae states bluntly. “Are you aware of that, Mr Watt?”
“I’m afraid I am,” Archie replies in a sad sort of tone. “It’s most inconvenient.”
“That’s one word for it,” someone says from behind Cae, and now Kendra too steps up onto the stage, finding her voice. “Another word for it is criminal.”
“Forgive me,” says Watt slowly. “We haven’t been introduced. You are?”
“Kendra Nai,” replies the ex-sergeant with a red hot glare. “Dartley’s new Chief of Police.”
“Ah,” is all Watt has to say, so Kendra takes this as an opportunity to continue talking.
“Whatever this weird little cult meeting is, I suggest you disband it, Mr Watt.” Kendra eyes up the old man carefully. “I don’t think your guests will be entertained by my style of interrogation.”
Archie watches her with a discernible note of fear developing in his pale eyes. “I’m inclined to agree, madam,” he answers. Then, to the rest of the gathering, he opens his arms graciously. “Brothers and sisters of the Clockworkers,” he begins. “I have much to discuss with these, our friends from the local constabulary. Go about your business until we reconvene.”
Kendra scoffs at the mention of the word “friends”, but Cae has to admit in the moments that follow that Archibald Watt is a most hospitable man. He guides Kendra, Cae and even Redd Richmond into an antechamber decked out as a pleasant little sitting room. They are made comfortable and given some water to drink whilst Archie Watt retrieves a long paper list from a nearby bureau. Cae studies the older man carefully, and he just can’t bring himself to think that Watt senior is a killer, no more than he could with Thomas at the scene of the second crime.
“Now,” Archie starts, sitting down in an armchair with his list. “I know you have many questions, but-‘
“No, no, no,” Cae interjects. “No buts. Here’s the deal. Your son is locked up at my station, and he told me I wouldn’t be able to handle whatever it is that’s going on here. He told me it was none of my business that these people were dying.” Cae points a gloved finger at Archie, but his expression is even and not unkind. “I’m prepared to let Thomas go, on the condition that you tell me everything I need to know, and you let me help you put an end to these stranglings.”
Archie Watt pushes back his thinning brown hair, taken aback a little. “Well that’s straight to the point,” he observes.
“We’ve had a hell of a night,” Kendra adds. “No thanks to your gauntlet.”
“I’m very surprised you got through it, actually,” Watt answers. “It’s designed for the robots to use.”
“Yes, yes, we’re a talented bunch,” Redd Richmond quips in. “Be a dear and get to the info, Archie, so I can get out of here and back into some proper tailoring.”
“Very well,” Watt states, unfolding the paper list in his lap. “Our organisation is known as the Clockworkers. We are responsible for the manufacture of clockwork surveillance robots designed to provide continual information on whomever we program them to watch.”
Cae nods eagerly, his mind starting to connect things. “Alright,” he says. “So what’s gone wrong?”
“One of our bots has a fault,” Archie states simply.
“And it’s killing people instead of watching them.” Kendra continues for him.
“Precisely,” Archie confirms. “You can see why we were reluctant to have the police involved, can’t you?”
“Of course,” Cae replies, trying to ke
ep any tones of accusation from his voice. “You made the creature. It would be seen to be your fault if there’s a malfunction.”
“So, you don’t know why this particular robot’s gone rogue?” Kendra asks.
“We haven’t a clue,” Archie answers. “Thomas was trying to follow it, but he kept getting there too late.”
“Yes, he mentioned ‘the following’,” Cae confirms, memories of the interview coming back to him. “He said something else too that I found very odd.” The young detective sits forward in his chair eagerly, blue eyes flashing with the speed of his thoughts. “He said that we were ‘the bad guys’. Can you explain that to me?”
“Ah,” Archie exclaims, brandishing the mysterious list again. “That’s where this comes into it. This particular robot has been following a shortlist of people we were investigating. They seem to be connected to a criminal magnate known as The Face. Are you familiar with the name, detective?”
Cae frowns a little. “I can’t say that I am.”
“Here, take a look,” says Watt senior, passing Cae his list. Kendra leans over from her armchair to see it. “This is a list of people we suspect to be connected to The Face. As you can see, many of them come from your constabulary.”
“Am I on it?” Redd Richmond asks between glugs of water.
“Why?” Kendra says suspiciously. “Should you be?”
“No,” he answers. “Never heard of The Face. I just want to know if this crazed robot might be coming after me.”
Cae scans the list. “No,” he states. “You’re not here, Redd.”
The conman breathes a sigh of relief.
“What a pity,” adds Kendra.
24.
With the list in his gloved hands, Cae suddenly notices two familiar names near the top that have been crossed off. One of them is that of Damian Jobe, the former Police Chief, and another connection forms in his sharp mind.
“Damian was working for someone else when he tried to have me killed,” Cae says to Kendra. Then he turns to Archie Watt. “Could that have been The Face?”
“I believe so,” Archie answers. “This character has been in operation for quite some time, at least a decade in fact, pulling the strings behind some of the biggest criminal operations in the whole metropolitan zone. We believe he’s had operatives working for him in the police force and judicial system for years.”
