Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes

by Tayell, Frank

  The broadcast announcing a trade deal between Britain and the three governments that called themselves the successors to the old United States wasn’t a sign of recovery. It was symbolic. A political message to the isolationists who would keep the food in Britain, and to the technophobes who thought radio was the first step leading back to AIs and the final destruction of the planet. And as much as the broadcast was for Britain, it was a message to the separatists in America. The world might have stalled with The Blackout, but it hadn’t changed. The American election was going ahead, and reunification would happen, no matter how much a small faction may wish otherwise.

  Mitchell turned towards the cracked asphalt road that led down the cliffs to the beach. As he walked his old, familiar beat, the sound of sawing grew distant, and he began to relax. He always came to this spot when he could spare the time. The rusting ships kept the beach relatively isolated, and few people had made their homes in the apartment blocks and seafront hotels nearby. That had changed with the construction of the antenna. Not only had they extended the railway line from Christchurch, but they were planning on electrifying the entire district. Of course, being Britain, that had led to letters to the newspaper complaining that local rents were going up.

  No, the broadcast wasn’t progress. A newspaper with complaints in a letters page and sports results printed on the back, almost lost amidst advertisements, that was worth celebrating. The results were for soccer, and the adverts were mostly for the powdered tea substitute the chemical works produced, but it was a promise of what was to come. However, it was the broadcast that would be the first chapter in the new history books, and that summed it all up. There would be history books again, and time for people to study them, but there wouldn’t be a single one that recorded the name of Henry Mitchell.

  His hand went again to his arm, this time deliberately brushing against the sergeant’s stripes. The demotion was his own fault. Policing had changed in the time he’d spent wandering the wasteland. They even had an academy now though the students spent more time studying maths and geography than forensics and law. Being given the new unit, however, seemed like an insult. Even the name was a joke. Serious Crimes. There were no serious crimes. Of course, all crimes were serious to the victims, but if a wagonload of cattle went missing, you looked for the butcher selling off-the-ration meat. If a wife was found murdered, you looked for the husband who’d not turned up for his shift at work. Serious, but not so complicated that they needed a new unit to deal with them. There were few thefts, and certainly no large ones, because in their twisted Utopia they all had so little.

  Maybe the commissioner was right. Mitchell had come to England on what was meant to be a working holiday, but had fallen into a harsh life of brutal justice. Both of those worlds were gone. Since The Blackout, he’d come to love and hate Britain in equal measure, but it wasn’t home. His home was twenty years ago, a foreign country he could only visit in wistful dreams.

  That left the question of where he would go in three months’ time. Not back to America. There was nothing there for him anymore. No, but there was Isaac. It was six months since they’d last spoken, but Mitchell knew the man would offer him a home. His hand went to his pocket and the note in it. Isaac had come to the city and wanted to speak. It wouldn’t hurt to go and listen to what the man wanted to say. There was the girl, of course. He would have to stay a sergeant in the police for the next three months, but after that he could… he could… could…

  There was something wrong about the man standing by the row of old beach huts. He had a white streak in brown hair that didn’t quite cover the missing half of his ear. That was nothing unusual. Most people had some reminder of those savage early years. No, it was his entire attitude that was wrong. The man was trying too hard to look nonchalant.

  “Evening,” Mitchell said, as he walked past. The man grumbled something in reply. Mitchell raised a hand to his cap, stealing a brief glance beyond the half-eared man. There were two other men standing in the gap between a pair of huts. Mitchell kept walking and didn’t look back until he knew he was out of sight. He ducked behind the wall of a wooden cafe that had been shuttered long before The Blackout and climbed up the steep grassy slope behind. He pulled off his cap, dropped to his knees, and then to his belly, crawling until he was close enough to see the three men.

  Yes, something was wrong with them. It was the clothes. The sentry and one of the other two men were dressed in the same mix of patched, overly washed jeans, faded T-shirts, and cracked boots that most people wore. But over the top they had jackets that were far too warm for the weather. The third man, however, was wearing a well fitting, cream-coloured suit. Either he’d paid a scavenger to search the ruins for clothes his exact size, or he’d paid a tailor to make him something new out of old-world linen. Whichever it was, it meant the man had money, and that meant he had an office, a home, and plenty of other places he could conduct this meeting. So why do it here? Of course, there could be an innocent explanation, but for each that Mitchell could think of, there were a dozen far more sinister ones.

  He looked around, gauging whether he could get close enough to hear what was being said without being seen. No. That left him with only one course of action. Whatever he might do in three months’ time, wherever he might go, here and now he was a copper. He crawled back down the hill and towards the path. He didn’t run, he didn’t saunter. He did pause to adjust the bulletproof vest and check his pistol was loose in his holster. Then he walked off the path and onto the beach.

  The huts were level with where a cruise liner had come aground. A storm in the first winter had torn its stern anchors free, twisting the ship until it was parallel with the shore. The spring tides had pushed it onto its side. The sand was now littered with debris spilled from the ship and stained red from where it had been left to rust. Mitchell picked an erratic path through the detritus, waiting until he was thirty yards from the hut before raising a hand in greeting to the sentry. The man nodded back. Mitchell changed direction, walking casually towards the man. The sentry turned away from Mitchell just as the other two men came into view. He could see their mouths move in urgent conversation, but couldn’t hear the words over the sound of the crashing surf. They stopped talking to watch his approach. For the briefest of moments, Mitchell thought his suspicions were unfounded, and then the sentry bolted, sprinting off down the path.

  The other raggedly dressed man pulled out a gun. Mitchell dived forward as a bullet whistled through the air above his head. He landed hard, his elbows jarring on a section of hull plate buried beneath an inch of sand. Ignoring the pain, he dragged himself towards a stack of cabin doors that someone had piled up on the beach. There was another shot and the sound of a bullet pinging off metal.

  A feral grin spread across Mitchell’s face. After the paperwork, politics, and uncertainty of the last few months, this was a situation with which he was familiar.

  “Police!” he yelled, adding under his breath. “Like you didn’t realise that.” He reached for his gun. Not the standard issue revolver at his belt, but the old-world 9mm he kept strapped to his ankle. Glass shattered a dozen yards in front of him.

  “Three,” he whispered, counting the shots as he darted a quick glance around the edge of the thick doors. The man in the suit was crawling along the path, away from the gunfire. Mitchell couldn’t tell if he’d been injured or was just too terrified to stand. Mitchell ducked back into cover just as a bullet ricocheted off the metal doors behind which he was hiding.

  “Four,” he said as he raised his pistol and fired off an unaimed shot of his own. The man replied. A bullet thudded into the sand a foot to his left, another into a hunk of driftwood two feet to the right.

  “Six,” Mitchell said, and stood up. His hunch was based on a momentary glimpse of the man’s weapon but he was certain it was a revolver. He was right. The man stood between the huts, fumbling cartridges into the chamber.

  “Drop it!” Mitchell barked. The man didn�
�t, opting instead to dive behind the relative cover of the hut’s wall.

  Mitchell took a sweeping step to the left, and another, trying to get a clear view. “You run, I’ll fire,” Mitchell called. The man had the grass slope to one side, the path to the other. “Throw out the gun and come out with your hands above your head. Do it!”

  He took another step. His heartbeat echoed in his ears. It always did at this moment. Knowing one of his bullets would easily pass straight through the wooden wall of the hut, he shifted his aim. Slowly, he tightened his grip. He was about to squeeze the trigger when there was a shout from behind the hut.

  “All right,” the man yelled. “I’m coming out.”

  “The gun first,” Mitchell shouted back.

  There was another pause, one that was almost too long, before a revolver clattered onto the path. Mitchell untensed, but only fractionally.

  “Now you,” Mitchell called. “Slowly!”

  An arm appeared, and then a shoulder, a head, and… the other arm was held low, behind the man’s back.

  “Don’t—” Mitchell began, but it was too late. The man spun around, the arm came up. In his hand was a second pistol, but before he could bring it to bear, Mitchell fired. The bullet struck. The man flew backwards. Mitchell ran across the sand, but he knew the man was dead long before he reached him.

  He kicked the gun out of the lifeless hand and suppressed that familiar wave of nausea he always felt after he brought more death into the world. He looked around for the man’s two companions. The one with half an ear was long gone, but the suited man was still trying to crawl along the path, barely sixty yards away.

  Mitchell jogged towards him. The man heard, pulled himself to his feet, and started to run. Mitchell started to sprint. He pounded down the sand-swept path. Twenty yards. Ten. Five. Three. Mitchell dived, knocking the man down.

  “Stop,” Mitchell growled. “And stop moving. It’s your own damn fault.” He dug a knee into the man’s back. “Stop,” he said again. The man did.

  Mitchell grabbed the handcuffs from the pouch at his belt, and cuffed one hand, and then the next.

  “Where’s the other guy going?” Mitchell asked. “Where?”

  His prisoner said nothing. Mitchell looked around, but there was no sign of the half-eared man.

  “What’s your name?” Mitchell asked.

  “I don’t have to tell you,” the man said.

  “Strictly speaking, that’s true,” Mitchell said. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to find out. I’ve got you for attempted murder.”

  “You can’t arrest me, I’ve got diplomatic immunity.”

  “Yeah, right,” Mitchell began, and was about to add a mocking laugh, but there was something about the accent and clothes that gave him pause. “Are you serious?”

  “My papers are in my inside pocket.”

  Mitchell pulled the man to his knees and searched his pockets until he found something he hadn’t seen in decades: a passport. The front wasn’t stamped with the name of the country but with the words ‘Office of the American Embassy’. Mitchell flipped it open and stared at the photograph. The picture was of such poor quality it could have belonged to almost any male between the ages of twenty and fifty.

  “It says your name is Lucas Fairmont and that you’re the principal secretary to the ambassador himself.”

  “Which means you’ve got to let me go,” Fairmont said.

  “Where are you from?” Mitchell asked. “Iowa?”

  “I’m not saying anything more,” Fairmont replied.

  “Fair enough,” Mitchell said. He began a far more thorough search of the man.

  “Hey! You can’t do that!” Fairmont protested.

  “And yet I am,” Mitchell said. There were no weapons, only a thick envelope hidden in a deep pocket concealed in the coat’s lining. “What’s this?” he asked, waving the packet in front of the man’s eyes.

  “Diplomatic correspondence. Which means you can’t open it,” Fairmont said.

  “Does it? Let’s see.” Mitchell tore at the seal, pulling the envelope open.

  “No! You can’t read them! It’s against the law!” Fairmont protested.

  This time Mitchell said nothing as he examined the contents. There were seven sheets of paper. On the left-hand side of each page was a list of names and addresses, with an esoteric collection of details next to each; an elementary school, the colour of the mailbox, the name of an aunt, a name of a business, the address of a lawyer… He turned to the next sheet and found it was much the same.

  “What does this list mean?” Mitchell asked.

  “I’m not saying another word,” Fairmont replied.

  “Yes, you said that before,” Mitchell said. “But why did you bring them out here? Were you selling them? Is that it? Have we devolved to espionage already?” He waited to see if Fairmont would say anything. He didn’t.

  “Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance,” Mitchell said. He hauled the man to his feet and pushed him back along the path, towards the dead body.

  “Stay here,” he said, pushing the man down to his knees, five yards from the corpse. “I’d suggest you tell me what was going on and in return I’d get a few years shaved off your sentence. But I don’t think you’ll take a deal, will you? No, I thought not.”

  Mitchell backed away from the man until he could see both Fairmont and the corpse. He picked up the gun the man had thrown out. It was a revolver, of the same make as the one holstered at Mitchell’s belt. Hopefully it was stolen. The armoury in Scotland manufactured rifles for hunters, shotguns for farmers, and revolvers for the police. Only the Navy used old-world firearms; assault rifles with barrels modified to take the new ammunition made at the powder works in Loch Creigh. Everything from Uzis to AK47s had come to Britain with the waves of immigrants who’d passed through the Channel Tunnel. Fortunately, after surviving the horrors of mainland Europe, few people had any ammunition left. Creating a standardised cartridge of a calibre too large to fit in the most common of old-world weapons, and whose sale was restricted and taxed, was a crude form of gun control. One that clearly hadn’t worked. He pocketed the revolver and picked up the other gun. It was an old-world snub-nosed pistol with four cartridges in the magazine. He weighed it in his hands, thoughtfully.

  “Do you think he planned to shoot you with this?” he asked Fairmont. The man said nothing.

  The sergeant turned back to the corpse. His bullet had entered through the man’s cheek, flying diagonally through the man’s head, blowing out an eye before taking off the top of his skull. He didn’t recognise what was left of the face, but that didn’t mean much.

  “You want to tell me who he is?” he called out to Fairmont. The man glared back.

  The dead man had little in his pockets. There were four loose rounds for the revolver, two one-pound notes and four penny-stamps, a clasp knife with a five-inch blade, and a coin. Mitchell examined it closely.

  All currency was printed. Denominations from fifty pence to twenty pounds were issued as notes, smaller currency was printed as stamps. Even the rarest of metals could be scavenged from the ruins of the dead cities, but electricity was scarce. Forging a printed, paper note was far more difficult than building a stamp to press out a metal coin. This coin, however, had never been used as currency. One side was stamped with what looked almost like a large backwards ‘L’. Around the face was an inscription, THE TRUTH LIES IN THE PAST, with each word separated by five stars. It felt like silver, but that was so common as to be worthless. It was certainly an odd thing to carry after the man had clearly gone to the trouble of emptying his pockets. There was no ration book, no handkerchief, no scraps of paper, and no keys. The man’s clothing was worn, but well repaired. The boots were old and clean but not polished. Boot polish wasn’t cheap, but it was certainly cheaper than black market government-issue ammunition. The coin was the real clue. Someone had gone to the trouble of creating it, and that meant there was a meaning to it. If he found the
meaning, he’d find the answers to the other questions. Of course, first he would have to secure the scene, call the coroner, report the shooting to the commissioner, and begin the tedious mound of paperwork that would then ensue. He looked at Fairmont. Or perhaps not.

  “Get up,” he said, hauling the man to his feet.

  “You have to release me,” Fairmont said. “I’ve got diplomatic immunity.”

  “That’s not how it works. How old are you?” He opened the man’s passport. “Thirty-six. If that’s close to the truth then you’re too young to remember. What your piece of paper means is that I have to take you to the embassy. I’m sure they have a cultural attaché who’d be interested in speaking to you.”

  “Cultural attaché?” Fairmont asked, clearly confused.

  “You see? That’s what I mean. You’re too young.” He dragged Fairmont along the path. There was probably someone from the embassy at the antenna. If not, he could send someone to fetch one. Hopefully what he’d stumbled across counted as a diplomatic incident and that would make it the business of the SIS - the Secret Intelligence Service. It certainly wouldn’t be a matter for Serious Crimes, and that meant Mitchell could ignore the paperwork and get busy solving the case.

  Chapter 1

  A New Cadet