The Foreigners

by James Lovegrove

  As far as Parry could ascertain, two rounds had been fired into the young man. One had entered his chest through the left half of his ribcage, just to the side of his sternum. Presumably its intended target had been the heart, but it must have missed, otherwise there would have been considerably more blood from the wound. The other round had been fired inside the young man’s mouth, angled up into the skull. If there were further injuries to the body, Parry could not see them.

  He turned to Johansen. “Do we have a name?”

  “We didn’t find any personal effects on the body.”

  “What about the room key?”

  “There.” The lieutenant pointed to the bedside table.

  “And you’ve notified the mainland criminalists, I take it?”

  “They’re on their way, along with the medical examiner. Boss? There’s also ... you know. The other one. Over there.” Johansen gestured towards the far corner of the room, where, beside the windows, whose curtains were still drawn, there lay a rumpled puddle of silky, glistening material. Parry had already registered this peripherally but, unwilling and unprepared to devote full attention to it yet, had chosen to concentrate on the body first. Now, drawing a deep, self-mastering breath, he stepped carefully around the dead young man and approached the windows.

  The puddle of material was unmistakably the golden robe of a Foreigner. Partly hidden among its folds were a pair of matching golden gloves. Next to it, a few centimetres from the high, ruched collar, was the shining aureate ovoid of a Foreign mask, resting on its side.

  Just items of clothing, mere inanimate artefacts – yet what they represented, what their presence in the room implied, made them just as disconcerting as the shattered, gory, defunct human being nearby, if not more so.

  “Sir?” said Avni, after Parry had stared down at the Foreign remains for a silent minute. “What’s your take on this? What do you think went on here?”

  Parry slid a hand backwards across his scalp until he found a patch of hair to scratch ruminatively. “I think it’s safe to assume that Pål’s correct and that our friend there” – he indicated the body – “is a Siren. Why else would somebody be in a Foreigner’s hotel room if not to sing? The question is, did he top himself, as it looks like he did, or...?”

  Murder.

  That was the word Parry was trying to keep out of his brain and off his lips. Ever since Johansen had described the scene to him, he had acknowledged that homicide was a possible explanation, but he refused to accept it was the likeliest explanation. Murder? In this day and age? In this city? Inconceivable.

  Yet there it was, the stark and bloody evidence in front of him. A life brutally terminated. And he had to consider the possibility that someone, some lunatic, had killed the Siren. Abhorrent though it was, he had to allow the idea head-space.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ll leave it to the criminalists and the medical examiner to tell us more. That’s what they get paid for.”

  “And what about the Foreigner?” said Johansen. “That’s the other question. What happened to it? There’s no damage that I can see to the clothing.”

  “Maybe the sound of the gun?” Avni offered.

  “Maybe,” said Parry, nodding. It had been observed that Foreigners became distressed by sudden loud noises, particularly percussive ones – although Parry had never heard of a Foreign loss being caused as a result.

  “Or maybe the Siren killed the Foreigner first, then himself,” suggested Johansen.

  “With what?” said Parry. “I don’t see any weapon here apart from the gun. Anyway, like I said, all that’s for the criminalists to determine, if they can. Our job is to do ... well, as much as the Constitution lets us. Which is figure out why the hell this has happened, whatever this is, and do everything we can to prevent it from happening again.” He smacked his hands together. “All right. Rachel, I want you and Yoshi to interview every human guest on this floor. Find out if anyone saw or heard anything, anything at all. I doubt the shots were audible. These premium-rate rooms are fully soundproofed. All the same, it’s worth asking. And Rachel? Go easy on Yoshi. Please. We were all young and inexperienced at one time or other.”

  “Yes, but not all of us think our shit doesn’t stink.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  Avni nodded, reluctantly.

  Parry turned to Johansen. “As for you, Pål – get a full statement off the concierge who found the bodies.” Get a full statement. Jesus, it was like being a proper copper again. And not in a good way. “Also, track down whoever was on duty in the lobby last night and get a statement off them too. And find out what time these two came in.”

  “No problem, boss.”

  “I’m going to stay here and have a nose-around, see if I can turn up anything before the criminalists arrive.” Parry looked away from the two officers, then looked back. “Oh, and by the way. You don’t need me to tell you this, but I’m going to anyway. Be polite. Be discreet. Let’s keep the ripples to a minimum, eh?”

  Johansen and Avni both manufolded ACCEPTANCE, and Parry replied with GRATITUDE.

  3. Study

  PARRY HAD A quarter of an hour by himself in Room 1114 before the medical examiner and criminalists arrived. During that time he was able to confirm for himself Johansen’s statement that the Siren was carrying no form of identification on him. Checking through the corpse’s cold pockets, he found nothing except an International Currency card. He activated the IC card’s tiny liquid-crystal readout and saw that it contained the equivalent of a pocketful of loose change, enough for, perhaps, a taxi-gondola ride home.

  The absence of personal effects was unsurprising. Sirens preferred to travel light. A refusal to carry personal items while working was almost a badge of their trade. It made them seem – to themselves, at any rate – a breed apart, an élite, divorced from the need for mundane human paraphernalia. Part of the attraction of their job was the sense it gave of being closer than anyone else to the golden giants, of being favoured above the rest of humankind. Anonymity enhanced that feeling of superiority. Not only that, lack of ID made it harder to keep track of them. The FPP’s global database of known Sirens was pitifully incomplete, accounting for perhaps a quarter of the estimated number of full-time Sirens on the planet. It suited Sirens that way. They liked to be able to come and go between resort-cities without being subject to special entry levies at Customs, the only practical method of taxing their income. Footloose and financially-free was the Siren lifestyle, and if some people, including Parry, were of the opinion that in this respect Sirens were taking advantage of the resort-cities’ liberalism, nevertheless it had to be accepted that singing was what the Foreigners seemed to like the most about Earth, what kept them coming here, and thus there was no alternative but to turn a blind eye to Sirens’ less public-spirited practices.

  Parry had a look round the room’s en-suite bathroom in the hope of finding something there, anything, that might tell him more about what had gone on here last night. The bath, shower cubicle, lavatory and basin – all designed for a being of Foreign proportions – were pristine, most likely having never been used for their proper purpose since their installation. The complimentary soaps, shampoos and teeth-cleaning implements were still in their cellophane wrappers, and had probably not been replaced in months. Almost from the outset it had become clear that Foreigners had no toilet needs, or at least none that matched those of humans, yet premium-rate hotel rooms continued to be built with fully-fitted bathrooms, more out of a kind of stubborn courtesy than anything. In this particular bathroom nothing looked suspicious and nothing appeared to be out of place, apart from the paper hygiene seal on the lavatory, which Hosokawa had snapped aside before throwing up into the bowl. Hosokawa had flushed his vomit away, but spatters of it remained around the lavatory rim, and a whiff of stomach juices was discernible in the dry, bleach-scented air. Parry remembered Avni’s dismissive comment a few moments ago. Hosokawa might think his shit did not stink, but his other digestive
products certainly did.

  Returning to the main room, Parry went back over to the Foreign clothing. Staring down, he tried to reconcile the inert, deflated thing in front of him with the glorious beings that swayed so sweetly and strangely through the world’s squares and thoroughfares. It was difficult to believe that these items of clothing had once draped a living Foreigner, in the same way that it was difficult to believe that a conch shell had once housed a living, ambulatory gastropod. Both were discarded casings, spotless and empty and lovely, retaining no trace of the creatures that had inhabited them.

  Foreigners, in the normal course of events, arrived from wherever they came from and returned there without anyone actually seeing them appear or disappear. They were able to transport themselves to and from Earth apparently at will, turning up fully-garbed and departing the same way, and always choosing their moment so that there were never any humans around, or looking in the right direction, to observe the act of matter-transference. They slipped back and forth between here and elsewhere as though they could simply open a fold in space and step through.

  When, however, one of them fell victim to some violent trauma, only that which provided shape and substance beneath its gleaming apparel disappeared. The clothing itself stayed behind. People who had been on hand when such an event occurred spoke of the Foreigner losing solidity, seeming to melt away within its robe, incohering, dissipating, its gloves deflating and falling, its mask hitting the ground with a dull, ringing thud. “Like a tent collapsing,” was the somewhat bathetic description given by one of these eyewitnesses.

  Not everyone was of the opinion that this sub-sartorial vanishing constituted death. Some Xenologists posited that it might in fact be a form of emergency escape mechanism. If, as was commonly believed, Foreigners were beings composed of invisible energy, such as soundwaves perhaps, and wore their robes, gloves and masks while on Earth purely in order to make themselves apparent and comprehensible to humans, then conceivably the shedding of that clothing was a quick means of getting out of a hazardous situation, the Foreign equivalent of a lizard detaching its tail. The ambiguity of the phenomenon was reflected in the term used to describe it – a “loss”.

  It was possible, then, that the Foreigner that had worn this outfit might still be alive. Might still be in this room, even. Unheard, unseen. Watching.

  A tingle ran, spiderlike, up the back of Parry’s neck, and he could not help darting a glance over his shoulder.

  No. Smarten up, Jack. You’re being foolish.

  Tugging a cotton handkerchief from his pocket and wrapping it around his hand, he bent down to pick up the mask. The makeshift glove served a twofold purpose. It prevented him leaving his fingerprints on the mask, of course, but it also meant that he was not actually touching the mask with his skin. Immediate physical contact with a Foreigner’s clothing was, to him, akin to desecration.

  He raised the mask until he and it were face-to-face. The pose was reverential, contemplative. Whether or not he was deliberately emulating Hamlet with Yorick’s skull, not even he was sure.

  He had held one of these masks before, but never under such circumstances. New Venice FPP had in its possession a half-dozen complete Foreign outfits, retrieved from the sites of previous losses. Among collectors, golden giants’ robes, masks and gloves fetched astronomical prices, and in order to stem this opprobrious (though not actually illegal) trade the FPP did its best to ensure that all items of Foreign clothing that turned up in a resort-city – and thankfully, they did not turn up often – were kept at that resort-city’s HQ in purpose-built storage units, tucked away out of sight so that they would never suffer the indignity of being displayed as trophies in some rich idiot’s dining room.

  In the past, Parry had visited the storage area and viewed the contents of the various drawers there, and even handled them, always with what he hoped was an appropriate reverence. He held this mask now with the same reverence. How light it was. The masks looked solid and you expected them to weigh several kilogrammes, but in fact they were hollow and no heavier than a soup bowl. Sealed seamlessly, with no aperture visible anywhere, they were clearly not conventional head-masks. They seemed props more than anything, devices intended to make Foreigners recognisably hominid. Hence the crude, quasi-human features – the pair of blind indentations for the eyes, the rounded peak of the nose, the bulging, bisected ellipse that represented lips, the crude cornrow corrugations that were roughly analogous to hair. They seemed an attempt by creatures, who, in their natural state, had nothing physiologically in common with their earthly hosts, to fit in, to look right, to be as similar and familiar as possible.

  Parry stared at the mask’s face until he became aware of his own face reflected in the mask’s surface, golden-tinged and distorted. He turned the mask this way and that, watching, with a peculiar, furtive delight, as his mirrored face rippled and undulated, as though made of melting wax. Then, remembering himself, he swiftly set the mask down, returning it as close to its former position as he could manage.

  He stood up again. Looked around again.

  There was a general orderliness about the room that was in stark contrast to the appalling disorderliness of the two sets of remains. The made bed. The drawn curtains. The fixtures and fittings, polished and dust-free. All the pieces of furniture in their rightful places, just so. Hotel rooms never reflected the characters of those who inhabited them. They were merely stage sets through which guests flitted, and between uses they were tidied up, purged of all traces of previous tenancy, re-minted, rendered shipshape again, readied for reoccupation. In due course even this one, once the body and the Foreign garments had been taken away and the bloodstains had been swabbed off the wall and scrubbed out of the carpet, would be as new again. It would be as though nothing had occurred here.

  New Venice was a city of transitory lives.

  Transitory deaths, too.

  A soft knock at the door announced the arrival of the criminalists. They were a pair of Moroccans, dapperly-dressed and toting large steel equipment cases, and they entered the room as Parry had done, closing their eyes then reopening them. With them was another Moroccan, the medical examiner, a man whose dour, jowly demeanour put Parry in mind of an Arabic Alec Guinness. The medical examiner introduced himself as Dr Hussein Erraji.

  “I think we’ve met before, actually, doctor,” Parry said. “An accidental drowning near the Exchange Bank, couple of years ago?”

  “Ah yes. I remember. You were Captain Balfe’s lieutenant.”

  “Correct.”

  “A good man, Captain Balfe.”

  “The best.”

  “And this” – Erraji glanced soberly around the room, stroking one corner of his thick moustache – “is not so good.”

  Parry gave a rueful nod.

  At a gesture from Erraji, the criminalists set down their briefcases, undid the catches, opened the lids, and began unpacking the panoply of their grim craft: white overalls, camera, fingerprint-dusting kit, adhesive tape, scrapers, tweezers, small resealable polythene sample-envelopes, clear plastic bags with which to sheathe the corpse’s hands.

  Erraji himself, meanwhile, sheathed his own hands in a pair of latex gloves.

  “You will be wanting my report as soon as possible,” he said to Parry, snapping the left-hand glove in place.

  “Please, yes.”

  “The autopsy will have to wait till we get the body back to Tangier. This afternoon at the earliest, more likely tomorrow. But I could send you a copy of my preliminary findings before then. Say, around lunchtime?”

  “I would be in your debt.”

  Erraji pointed in the direction of the Siren’s body. “This is not something the Foreign Policy Police is particularly well-equipped to deal with. Death in suspicious circumstances.”

  “Believe me, I’m aware of that.”

  “It might be better if the mainland authorities were to become involved.”

  “Might be,” Parry agreed. “But then the Fo
reign Policy Constitution is quite specific. Offshore resort-cities are exempt from outside jurisdiction.”

  “I was merely making a point.”

  “And I appreciate what you’re saying. If it’s any consolation, I used to be a detective sergeant in the London Met. I have had some experience in this sort of thing.”

  “Then this should be just like old times for you.”

  “God, I hope not,” said Parry, with a sardonic grimace.

  At that, Dr Erraji nearly – nearly – cracked a smile.

  4. Crotchet

  THE THREE MOROCCANS set to work, and Parry, content that the scene of the incident was in good hands, opened the door to leave.

  And was confronted by a vision of pure fury.

  Captain van Wyk was standing in the doorway with his fist raised, surely with the intention of knocking on the door but looking, equally, as though he was about to punch someone. His face was an alarming shade of plum. The whites of his eyes were crazed with engorged capillaries. His ears were vermilion to their very tips. His scalp, visible through his close-cropped flaxen hair, glowed bright red. It was as though the whole of his head had filled to bursting with blood, and the thought that sprang to Parry’s mind was that his fellow FPP captain was about to fall down dead on the spot from a catastrophic cerebral aneurysm. That would be just what this corpse-ridden room needed – a third set of remains cluttering the floor.

  Van Wyk had been taken aback by the sudden, unexpected opening of the door. Now, recovering his wits, he began to bellow.

  “Captain Parry! What the fuck is this? What in the name of fuck is going on? Why is it that you were informed about this incident in person and I have to find out from a fucking e-memo on my work board?”

  “Van Wyk,” said Parry, quickly latticing his fingers into the hand-symbol for TRANQUILLITY. “Please. Not here.”