After a long, awkward silence in which Iris pretended not to hear Spider’s sobs, Iris said, “Spider, I’m sorry.”
He nodded, exhausted. “Why would I—?”
Her hands up in front of her, Iris said, “Really, it’s okay. It’s fine. It’s fine, Spider. It’s just—”
“I know.”
“This new gig they’ve got me on, all this ‘Time Crime’ bullshit—” (she was careful to indicate enormous air-quotes around ‘Time Crime’) “—it’s…” She trailed off, lost for words, exasperated, staring out the window at the garden out the front of the building.
“I understand,” he said.
“So, if it wasn’t you—”
“Exactly,” Spider said. “How did it get there?”
“There’s no sign of tampering with the camera itself, nor its connection to the server at head office.”
“Even if the culprit did use a time machine, I don’t see how it could be done,” Spider said, staring at the floor, still feeling fragile, longing for a double-shot macchiato, and wondering if Iris might oblige him.
“Yeah,” she said. “Even if he used one of those base-station units, with the handheld remote to blip into the break room—”
“We’d have seen the guy arrive and do the deed.”
“What about some kind of loop?”
“Chrono-forensics would have found telltales in the feed — splices or patches of digital noise.”
Iris nodded.
“Well the bloody head didn’t just turn up in there by itself!” Spider said, thinking the bleeding obvious — and the frankly impossible. Severed heads, even the severed heads of time travelers, did not do that sort of thing. Severed heads generally died fast. Spider remembered from a university course long ago that during “The Terror” of the French Revolution countless unfortunates were put to the guillotine, and the scientists of the day had conducted tests to determine just how long consciousness might linger — and found it to be about a minute. The severed heads communicated by blinking once for yes and twice for no. The heads had to be kept alert for as long as possible — sometimes with slaps to the face, often by shouting obscenities to distract the head from its physical pain. He shuddered, thinking about it.
All the same, it gave him a thought. “You’ll be getting him, it, autopsied, right?”
The question startled Iris. “Yes, yes, of course. Mysterious death. Might give us a lead on finding the rest of the body.”
Outside, a pair of black crows, perched on a street light, cawed, the sound like mocking laughter.
In life, Dickhead had been the kind of man who, while not actually obese, somehow managed to take up a great deal of room. He had only to enter a room, dressed in his customary style of cheap off-the-rack suits, for it to feel suddenly full, all means of escape cut off. Spider, who had once been a gamer and missed it badly, always thought of the wargaming concept of “zone-of-control”, in which a unit occupying a given hex on the map exercised control of the six surrounding hexes, preventing enemy units from passing. Dickhead used this power all the time when he wanted to talk to you, even if you were alone, out in the open, with empty space all around, you were pinned and there was no escape until he went away. It was the most baffling, appalling thing.
And yet, despite everything that Dickhead McMahon had been up to — from his constant harassment of Spider over the firm’s drooping key-point indicators to his final and terrifyingly unlikely desire to create an empire at the End of Time itself, including the manipulation of Spider into handing over Molly — Spider found that he actually missed the great git.
It had been months since Dickhead’s disappearance, and not a day went by when Spider did not reach into his desk drawer and read again that letter Dickhead had sent him. The letter telling Spider that he now owed Dickhead a favor, and that he would be calling on Spider to collect it. That moment, he was thinking, looked like it had arrived: Dickhead’s faint, whispery voice, clearly in agony, desperately asking Spider for help.
As if he’d known that Spider would be there at that very moment and had deliberately arranged for his severed head to be in the fridge, and still just barely conscious and able, after a fashion, to speak. The timing of it from the severing of the head to its arrival in the fridge and discovery by Spider suggested the most careful planning, and careful planning suggested a more than typically baroque Dickhead scheme, but why?
And what was Spider supposed to do about it? Keep Dickhead from having his head cut off? The idea made Spider laugh, which quickly turned to coughing. And then Iris was there, pounding his back until he held up a hand for her to stop. “I’m okay. I’m fine,” he said, still getting his breath, all woozy, the room tilting and turning around him. He sipped some more of his sugary tea, now cold and vile. “Listen,” he said. “Could you get a decent bloody coffee?”
Iris looked at him, head tilted to one side, hands on her hips, unimpressed. “Do I look like I make coffee, Spider?”
“Just get the droid to do it. It’ll be fine.”
“What? That robot thingy?”
“It makes really good coffee, Iris.”
Iris berated him about how she wasn’t his receptionist, and that his actual receptionist, Malaria, who knew her way around a coffee machine, was sitting just outside the office door, but Spider stared at her, his eyes huge and moist and sad.
“Oh no, not the puppy dog eyes, not that!” Disgusted, she stomped out of Spider’s office.
“So, Iris,” Spider said, between sips of his near-perfect double-shot macchiato, already feeling revived by its heady steam, “the autopsy report on the head…?”
“You want me to give you a copy as soon as I get it?” she said.
“I’m kind of involved, don’t you think?”
“Spider, at this point, you’re a witness, and that’s it.”
“A witness? For God’s sake, Iris—”
“Count yourself bloody lucky you’re not a suspect!”
He sat there, trying to control his temper.
Iris looked at him, her face unreadable. “In your statement you mentioned a letter the deceased sent to you a few months ago.”
“That’s right.” He got up, put his coffee down, and went to his desk to retrieve it. The letter was a few sheets of expensive, heavy paper, printed from one edge all the way over to the other edge, with no paragraphs. It was, Spider thought, the essence of Dickhead. “Here, read it yourself.”
Iris took the letter and skimmed it while he went back to his coffee. He watched her face, a little amused, watching her eyebrows dancing up and down, the minute shakes of her head, her wince of disgust. That was the Dickhead experience, that was. She scanned the letter into her handheld, tagged it, and very carefully popped it into a plastic evidence bag. “This is the first time I’ve seen it,” she said, annoyed at him. “It offers material evidence of his state of mind. You know we’ve been looking for him.” Apart from his criminal activities at the End of Time, he was also wanted in the present, for countless offences against the Companies Act. Apparently there were a baffling number of secret bank accounts, connections to dodgy Swiss financiers, mysterious shell company structures (which more closely resembled coral outcroppings than straightforward business interests) and it appeared that he had siphoned off close to ten-billion dollars from his numerous legal and illegal interests.
“What was I supposed to tell you, Iris? That I got a lovely note from good old Dickhead, Emperor of the Universe, from the End of Time itself! ‘Things going well here at End of Time Towers.’ Yeah, I could see you loving me sharing that with you!”
“Spider, like I said, it’s his state of mind. Meanwhile, our forensics people could very likely have lifted evidence from the letter that might have helped us locate him, and at the very least would have helped us give his wife — his wido
w, I suppose — a bit of peace of mind. Did you think of that, Spider?”
Spider knew Dickhead’s wife, Sarah, only slightly. Sarah McMahon lived in an expensive apartment in a tower development in South Perth, with a dramatic view of the Swan River. Lovely place, he recalled. Sarah McMahon had recently been in touch with Spider, asking if he’d seen Dickhead. The last message she’d received from her husband said he would be home for a flying visit in March, but he never did show. She believed Dickhead “traveled a lot for business”, which was why she was always stuck at home on her own, and hardly ever saw him. She had no idea about his vast Zeropoint empire. If she’d heard the name, she probably thought it was some kind of software startup Dickhead had invested in. Spider tried to avoid her. He wanted to tell her the truth about her wayward husband, but he knew she would never accept it. Even though Sarah had her own time machine, a high-end Japanese unit, very expensive, parked in the secure underground car-park beneath the apartment tower, it would never in a zillion years occur to her that her erstwhile husband had an entire separate identity, a secret life to top all secret lives, a long, long way from the exclusive avant-garde world of Perth high society. And yet, when she called, that pitch in her voice, the loneliness, the pain, and, worse, that knowing tone: she knew Spider knew what was going on, and very likely where Dickhead might be. Why wouldn’t he tell her? Why? Because, Sarah, it would blow your tiny mind to Kingdom Come, that’s why! The number of times he’d nearly told her, had even started to tell her. The time he went over there one night after work, fully intending to lay it all out for her — but hesitated as he stood at her front door, and finally turned and left. He couldn’t do it. She didn’t deserve it.
“That was a pretty shitty thing you did there, Spider,” Iris said, reading her scan of the letter again. “She deserves to know who she’s involved with.”
“I know, but you’re wrong.”
Iris looked at him. He hid behind his coffee.
There was a very welcome knock at the door. “Boss?”
Iris blinked, surprised, and turned to face the door. “Ah. Kevin. Yes. What news?”
This was Iris’ new off-sider, Detective Senior Sergeant Mullens, a solid, middle-aged fellow about Spider’s age, poured into a bad suit, a man with a “great face for radio”, as Spider had once put it. A man who, on close inspection, resembled a building in a suit. Spider thought Dickhead himself would have admired such a suit. Spider knew Mullens of old. They were not pals. And now, as Mullens spoke to Iris, he did not so much as glance at Spider. Which was fine with Spider, of course. Though he did say, “Oh, g’day, Mullens! I see you still haven’t done much about that face of yours, have you?”
“Spider!” Iris said, giving him one of her trademark Looks of Death.
Mullens’ face went pale, and seemed for a moment to pucker with tightly controlled anger. Still, he refused to acknowledge Spider’s presence. He paused, gathered himself, and told Iris, “We’re about done here. Any last requests?”
Iris said, “Righto. Check everything once more for good measure, and I’ll see you back at the office.”
Mullens nodded acknowledgement. “Boss,” he said, and left, closing the door behind him.
Iris sighed and turned back to Spider. “You don’t do yourself any favors, do you?”
“Mullens and his irksome ilk never did me any favors, let me assure you.”
She shook her head, clearly dismayed at all the juvenile bullshit.
Spider said, “So, no can do on the autopsy report, then?”
“I’ll see what’s what,” she said, as if making a concession to him that cost her years of her life. Spider had no official standing in the WAPOL, and certainly not in the Time Crime Unit. Yes, he had been consulting with Iris here and there on a few cases these past few months, but not in any formally approved capacity. He was given a VISITOR badge when he showed up at Headquarters, something that had happened exactly twice, and both times it had nearly done him in, just being there.
Then Iris said, “For argument’s sake, let’s say Dickhead McMahon’s head somehow managed to come back in time, or whatever, to ask for your help, presumably with keeping him from getting his head cut off—”
“Yeah, okay,” Spider said, glad to be back to the matter at hand.
“And let’s say he meant business with what he said in that letter, that he did tweak the universe from the End of Time in order to make you beholden to him—”
“Uh-huh.”
“The thing I don’t get, if all that is true, is just what you are supposed to be able to do for him.”
“I know. I’m only good at fixing time machines.”
“Exactly. Other than the resources you have at your disposal here at the shop, you’ve got nothing. You don’t even have a proper place to live!”
“Dickhead doesn’t care about that. Read his letter again. He believes I’m his Champion or some damn thing, and I should be with him, at his right hand.”
“Bloody delusional!” Iris said, shaking her head.
“Yes, apparently only I can make everything better for him. He’s got all these people: experts, brilliant minds, commandos and his letter says he wants me. Well I don’t want him. I’m still having nightmares about his acolytes at the End of Time, all dead because Dickhead told them it was time to partake in the Final Secret, to pave the way for the End of Everything. I can’t save him and I won’t die trying.”
Chapter 4
Four days later, Iris called Spider. Her voice was low and urgent.
“I need to see you. Now. Today.”
“Cool,” he said. “I’ll order some lunch.”
A whirl of questions went through his mind, and he knew he could ask none of them, not over an open, unencrypted line.
“Good.” She hung up.
Iris arrived at half-past twelve. Spider told Malaria to show the detective straight through to his office. “Good to see you,” he said. “Coffee?”
“Mmm, please,” Iris said, pale and frowning, and took off her gabardine raincoat, slung it over the back of the guest chair, and sat down, legs crossed.
Spider thought she looked like someone about to sit an exam for which she hadn’t studied: unsettled, fidgety, her face tense. Hmmm, he thought, concerned, and popped his watchtop, opened the coffee droid’s interface, and summoned the machine.
“I really shouldn’t be here,” Iris said, still frowning.
“You sounded kind of freaked out on the phone,” Spider said.
Iris rubbed her face; she looked tired and drawn. “I don’t know. Just a feeling.”
There was a knock on the door. Spider jumped, startled; Iris’s eyes went wide. “God,” she said.
“It’s open!” Spider called. To Iris, he said, “It’s the coffee droid.”
Iris swore under her breath. The door swung open, and the droid shuffled in. “Spider-san! And guest!” it said. “I bring coffee-production system to you! What is…” It hesitated for programmed dramatic effect. “…your poison?”
“Oh, kill me now,” Iris said.
Spider ordered his standard double-macchiato. Iris said she’d just like a good old, straightforward flat white, thanks. When the droid asked about biscuits, Spider waved it off. “Very good, Spider-san!” it said, as plumes of steam vented from it, and it started grinding fresh beans, surprisingly quiet, considering it was right there in the room with them. After a moment, as the fresh-ground coffee aroma began to fill the room, cups appeared, coffee began streaming into them, then appropriate doses of steamed milk (very little for Spider’s macchiato; more for Iris’ flat white, followed by a creamy dollop of steamed milk froth). “Your coffee,” the droid said with a certain dramatic flair, “awaits!” Spider got up, grabbed the coffees, shook his head with amazement, telling the machine that it was a “good droid, very good,” and
that that would be all for now. The droid said, “Very good, Spider-san! I am but a moment away!” and it shuffled out the door.
Spider handed one of the cups to Iris, who stared into the finely-textured foam admiring the way the droid had managed an artful design in the crema. “Nice work, eh?” he said. “Amazing, considering how little we’re paying for the lease—”
“Spider,” Iris said. There was an all-business tone in her voice.
“Iris?”
“You asked about the autopsy report.”
“Yeah.”
“The preliminary report’s in.”
“Oh.”
“We’re waiting on the DNA. Machine’s down. Needs a part from Taiwan.” She shook her head, sighed, took an experimental sip of her coffee, paused, looking down at it, then at Spider.
Spider knew about lab machines from the old days. “Uh-huh,” he said. Back then he was always having to wait for crucial test results because the machine involved was stuffed; or the service guy responsible for it was on holidays; or some damn thing. The lab people always did the best they could under trying circumstances.
“Anyway,” Iris said, “the thing is this: as far as we can tell, it is the one and only Dickhead’s head, or at least a very good cloned copy.”
“Okay,” Spider said, sure there was more to come, and that it was something bad. The way Iris seemed to be working her way up to it did surprise him. She was usually more direct, even unto the point of blunt rudeness.
“But get this,” Iris went on. “The wound to his neck, the pathologist reckoned it was consistent with the head having been sliced cleanly off, not hacked or sawed or chopped, say. And there was likely more than one killer. One probably holding Dickhead’s head back — like this,” she said, using her free hand to pull her own head back, exposing her pale throat. “While someone else, well…” She left Spider to imagine the rest while she went back to her coffee. “This is surprisingly good, by the way,” she said, an afterthought. “We should get one of those things for the office.”
Paradox Resolution Page 3
