I look at the reverse of the fragment.
“There’s something there,” I point out. “Looks like they tried to insulate it from heat on the inside with a reflective coating or something. The engine must have run really hot with limited heat transfer to the outside.”
Warren clicks on another image on the computer screen, and points to a satellite image of the FTO.
“Bonnet vent,” he says. “That explains why that was added. Trying to cool the engine. It certainly wouldn’t have made it go faster.”
“In the woods around here, more like a dead leaf vac and bug scoop,” I joke.
“Yeah,” he ponders. “Anyway, the bodywork detonated the live rounds in the trunk, as well as what looks like additional detonator electrics running through the rest of the car set up for some sort of small missile or rocket-launcher, but no arms signatures found for those, so either it wasn’t loaded or designed to fire something else. Like a harpoon or net-launcher. Can’t put a missile in a regular car anyway. Not unless you want to completely invalidate the warranty on your tyres, and the burglar alarm to go off and trigger all sorts of other problems.”
“Not to mention the Scotchguarding guarantee on the upholstery would automatically expire,” I agree politely.
“And don’t even get me started on what would happen to the sub-woofers and tweeters,” he chuckles.
“What if it had a flamethrower?” I suggest. I’m looking over his shoulder at what the computer has simulated as the blast radius. “Something created an instant fireball which burned itself out just as quickly. Any evidence of gas tanks?”
“Not yet.” He shakes his head and taps the twisted fragment with a pencil. “We only found this bit so far, because it fell out of a tree on Sparky’s head while he was metal-detecting for bullets on the ground. But Forensics could test soil and plant samples for chemical evidence of a gas. I’ll get them to send your boyfriend down there with the team to do a bit of Gardener’s World. A few walking wounded animal casualties are coming in. Most with gunshot or shrapnel wounds and minor singeing. Drury’s been over at Forestry Rescue logging them in, if you stop by and see her afterwards, you can find out if any have sustained what look like gas burns.”
“Why do you think someone’s making these?” I ask. “Is it just the next step up in banger racing or something sinister?”
“We’ve had it before,” he sighs. “You get these little Apocalypse-based cults who think the world’s about to go horseradish-shaped, and start building themselves nuclear bunkers, stockpiling dry food, and occasionally arming themselves to defend what they believe will be their sustenance. This is typical Mad Max syndrome, guys who watch too much robot-war, pimp-my-scrap-yard TV. But there’s a different sort of escapism emerging from the current recession. Not to mention what Charlie and Sparky used to refer to in their old days as a hippy cull. Cutting out dead wood and freeloaders. Kind of like the local Councils sending in the building inspectors, and closing as many old people’s homes as they can to save money, without being accused of shifting them out into the open to die.”
“Attack being the best form of defending one’s shares in supply?” I query. “That’s very cynical, as viewpoints go.”
“I think they justify it more as a kindness,” Warren says. “Old, sick, weak, diseased, or even tramps, as you may have observed. Haven’t you noticed on the News, about cancer patients having their medication axed as well? Everywhere they can, little life support systems are being reduced or cut to save money, in the hope that the problems will go away once people die from their complaints instead of live with them. People aren’t just afraid to grow old any more, or be out of work. They’re afraid to get sick. Which means there’s a small contingent out there looking for alternatives to getting old and sick, and another contingent who don’t want to see that happen either. Think it goes against nature. But then, it’s still all about money and what people can and can’t afford, of what’s currently available. That’s the reality. The rest, is down to each individual’s interpretation of reality.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” I say at last. “I thought you were going to say these cars were being re-designed to arm supposedly indestructible contract killers. Who have apparently no concept of Engineering Chemistry, or Thermodynamics.”
“Yeah, that too,” he grins. “For a very specific kind of contract, though. That’s what we’re interested in analysing at the moment. People with more time and money on their hands than sanity.”
“Where are they getting the hardware from?” I want to know, knocking on the boot of my car, and immediately hoping War In A Box doesn’t know how to play Who’s There.
“Gulf surplus,” he says shortly.
That paints enough of a picture for me. I have a pretty good idea what sort of contingent in society are involved from that short response too. I watch Warren’s back in his short-sleeved camouflage shirt, as he types an SMS to head office.
I guess now he didn’t shop for all his khaki gear at the Gap.
Send a thief to catch a thief, as the saying goes. And a doorman to catch a doorman, and a soldier to catch a soldier. Takes one to know one.
I wonder if Bob and Jay started out topping drug-dealing hit-men, and how many former veteran colleagues Warren knocked off before ending up in Logistics.
I wonder what Yuri was, before he was this Yuri.
I’d rather not think about how Connor started out culling wild animals, and what that says about him.
“Did you have to go through the psychological reviews?” I ask him, as he puts his phone away.
“Yeah, once they persuaded me to put down the chainsaw,” he nods, turning back to the computer. “Textbook partial dissociative fugue. That’s selective amnesia, to the layman.”
“How did you deal with it?” I ask. “Losing a personality?”
“I got a new face,” he replies mildly. “And a new personality.”
“Do you remember much now?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “Luckily, I don’t see him in the mirror any more, though.”
W.P.C. Drury is pleased to see me. She looks like she’s drawn the short straw at the wildlife rescue charity station, and would rather be somewhere else.
“It’s their scared faces, and the noise they make,” she confides in me. “They don’t know what’s happening to them.”
“Any casualties with burns?” I ask. “I don’t necessarily want to see, I’m as squeamish as you - just give me details.”
She passes me the admissions list, where brief notes are scribbled before the patient is seen by the veterinary team.
“A muntjack with a scorched flank, otherwise very perky, was going for my sandwiches,” she remarks. “And a kestrel with burnt feathers on one wing, could only fly in circles.”
“I spoke to head office on the way over, they’ve asked for chemical tests for gas,” I report. “Blood and swabs and hair samples. Or feather, I’m guessing.”
“Cool. I’ll pass onto the vet that the University Chemistry lab is waiting,” Drury nods, and glances over the list again, pointing at an entry. “He was the worst one. Poor buck came in with a wooden stake through his neck. Missed all the major veins and arteries, and just grazed his oesophagus. They reckon he’ll be all right, though.”
“What was it, a piece of fencing or something?” I query.
“I’ll show you.”
She goes through a door, and returns with an object in a clear plastic bag, about as long as my forearm and pointed. Someone has labelled the bag with a permanent marker. Wooden Tent Peg.
“Tent peg?” I ask.
“A lot of camp sites in the area, must have come across similar before in incidents.”
“I don’t think this driver was the happy camping type,” I ponder. “What were they going to do with this, do you know?”
“We’re retaining any pieces of car shrapnel, but I think that was going in the bin,” she says. “Not enough evidence linking it to the car.”
<
br /> “I’ll let Connor have a look at it first,” I say. “Always better to have someone else’s interpretation. Just in case.”
I head for the school to pick up Junior, in a thoughtful mode. I know that something about this situation as it develops is barking for my attention, but I’m not sure what it is. And for once I’m not talking about Connor. I feel as though hints have been gently dropping all around me, while I was preoccupied with what was going on over him.
I’m also aware that looking for an underlying ongoing story, while life carries on in its usual random meaningless fashion, is a sign of psychosis. But continuity is something I don’t have, aside from in my job. I’ve learned to ignore the little voices I hear filling in the gaps of what I do see of the world, outside my life and Junior’s, and progressive generations of computer simulated Zombie Pets. But now I’m involved more behind the scenes, not just waking up and falling out of bed when the phone rings, I feel as though something else is appearing in those gaps - which I hadn’t even considered.
I press Speakerphone as Connor rings, my phone lighting up the dashboard, with the promise Warren’s given me that War In A Box won’t detonate no matter how many other gadgets Junior and I play with in the car.
“Hey,” I greet him.
“We just lost a uniform marksman,” he tells me. “Stupid tosser tried to pick up a foreign contract out playing Paint-Ball on a stag do with a real gun, and head office sent Jag Nut. He got the marksman and two other guys after a payout for the same contract, who were both doormen. He’s not bad. Probably was his ideal scenario, dressing up playing soldiers and having his idea of fun.”
“Sounds about right,” I remark. “Was it anyone you knew?”
“Yeah, nobody special though, just some guy liked to brag on Facebuddy about being licensed to kill,” Connor grunts. “The contract he was after is a bit of a mystery one. Someone’s offering a lot of cash for this little Haitian guy to turn up dead. Maybe they think he’s a zombie, and want proof otherwise.”
“Maybe,” I reply, not inclined to disagree. “How do you think your workmate got wind of that one? Not shuffling through police files on his overtime, was he?”
“No,” Connor says. “Head office reckoned he got it from an online console War gaming forum, along with the two doormen who showed up. That’s why all three were in one place.”
“I’m surprised Jason didn’t have a go, I’m pretty sure that’s all he does in his spare time. As well as watch porn,” I say. “Probably a good thing he was called up to go after them. He’d have been competing with them too, otherwise.”
“Probably the REASON he was called up to go after them,” Connor agrees. “Speaking of targets that wouldn’t die, got a nice image in my head of more than I ever wanted to know about Kaavey Canem right now, since his post mortem. Metal plate in the skull, one lung, one kidney, one remaining third of a liver, stomach bypass, and a pacemaker with automatic re-start, until you put a bullet through it via Sandra Harte. He’d sold half his working body to get a new passport and identity. Dingo rabies would have killed him eventually, untreated, but it’s not something they want to spread around here. Couple of his fun-time girls are in hospital having blood transfusions and steroids trying to remove it at the moment. Still trying to track down a third. I have a feeling that’s what you and I are up to later. Some other unsavoury types might be after Canem’s girls, wanting to silence them about where his organ-donor passport comes from.”
“Can’t say I ever wanted a job in International Relations,” I admit. “But I’m willing to give it a shot.”
“That’s the idea,” Connor says, chuckling.
“I’m glad you mentioned Canem, though,” I tell him. “I was just thinking about something. About indestructible contract killers.”
“Yeah,” Connor says thoughtfully. “The thing about the really indestructible contract killers though isn’t about how to kill them. It’s what you’d pay for them to stop.”
“Yeah, I know,” I concede. “Bullets are cheap. Not getting shot is expensive.”
I stand in the school playground waiting for Junior, while toddlers run round and round like leaves in a mini-whirlwind, making themselves and their mums dizzy. Snippets of other women’s multi-lingual gossip reaches my ears, between the happy squeals of the pre-school children.
“…He called me a Bunny-Boiler just because I Prodded him on Facebuddy…” …That was in Thai…
“We’ve moved the mortgage twice and just re-mortgaged, and now mum wants to sell up and move in with us. HER house was supposed to be ours in the Will, we’ll be stuck with ours, and we can’t…” …English, with a slight Welsh accent…
“…He’s been granted leave and coming home for three months but he’s not right, I can tell from his letters he’s depressed. It’s that Gulf Syndrome. I’m taking him straight to the Priory for assessment. But he says he just wants to go out and get drunk with his mates, and I know I’ll never see him while he’s here, if I let him. I just want him nice and safe in hospital, where I can see him every day and make sure he’s…” …English again, like the next two…
“…He does nothing but watch Bunny Girl USA and it’s constant, Why don’t YOU look like that with a fake tan and hair extensions? He says I look like Worzel Gummidge when I get dressed up. He’s no George Clooney himself…”
“…He hates that I listen to their music and says I’m obsessed, always on their website looking for the latest stuff. I tell him if he looked like that or had their talent or made some sort of effort I’d find him as fascinating…”
“Oh, it was amazing, she’s meant to be three hundred years old and in her former life lived to a thousand years old. In this life she escaped from persecution in France as a witch. She’s the original genuine vamp psychic and now she does these incredible past-life soul mate crystal readings. You should come, it’s the most amazing thing you’ll ever hear, it’s not much to pay when you think about what you might learn. Her name is Luna Lumiere, I’ll show you her website…” …French, this time…
“…I told him, you won’t get any better than me. I don’t care if she makes her own cheese…” …And finally Polish…
“Mummy!”
Junior’s greeting is a welcome burst of sunshine in the dubious shallows of reality lapping around me, now on the edge of hearing as she swamps me in a bear-hug. I’m not sure I approve of balaclavas in school, particularly with Tru-3D dark glasses and a harmonica stuck in her mouth, so that she resembles a jolly knitted Bender the Robot from Futurama toy. She spits the harmonica into my hand, and gives me a kiss hello.
“I got one of my Zombies into the relay race and my best Zombie won a cooking competition,” she announces. “Hendry in my class told me a cheat, where if your Zombie can’t find or buy any special ingredients, you make him take off his own foot, make a stew out of it, and it wins! And my other Zombie went to aerobics, and the winner is the one with the least amount of bits fallen off when the music stops. I’m still practising sticking them back on quick enough. I put an arm where its head should be, and its head sticking out of its bottom, so I lost. Can you buy me some chewing gum, please?”
“Sure,” I say, putting my arm around her and glad to be back in a world I understand, the gossip left behind us as we head out of the playground. “How was the rest of your day?”
Comfortably armed with chewing gum, milkshake and the promise of Chinese takeaway for dinner, Junior tucks herself up in bed telling me she has worked out that her Zombies will come for a bath if she shouts ‘Eat brains!’ pretending to feed them, meaning their spare parts last longer. And one of them has been given X-ray vision by the Mad Scientist when it went to have its undercarriage bolted back on, meaning it can now see hidden keys to locked rooms and bonus levels in the haunted house, which have been swallowed by other Zombies.
I’m glad to hear there is a way of fixing the ongoing problem of the lost undercarriage. I remember her getting extremely vexed at Christmas wh
en Zombie Pets Babies arrived, and she kept yelling “It says ‘Undercarriage Dropped Out’ and won’t let me stick it back on, and now my Zombie can only go around commando on his elbows!” convinced that the game was faulty.
Apparently ‘undercarriage’ is the important bit connecting the spine to the legs. Pelvis, in human terms. Apart from the terminology, I view it as quite an educational piece of software.
While she’s happy and not demanding dinner yet, I do a bit of knitting and review my recent diary. The unseen link in recent events that I’m looking for isn’t there. In fact I’m startled how sane and normal my writing sounds, from the point of view of looking for evidence of something like that.
I have a browse through my textbooks looking for references to post-traumatic stress disorder, trying to identify with Warren’s perspective, but find I’ve got very little, just a mention under a heading on borderline personality disorder. I’ll have to remedy that and go to the bookshop and find something. I do have a quick flick through some old memoirs of the French Foreign Legion that a library was nice enough to give me, having put them away in the basement as books no longer requested, but post-military PTSD didn’t seem to exist back then, a century or so ago. Legionnaires built roads, had prostitutes on tap, travelled the world, and pretty much did as they pleased, with fond memories of such - while avoiding traditional things like marriage, inheriting an uninspiring family business, or vagrancy. And they hunted down deserters, pretty much relentlessly. In one of my books, a deserter was returned to serve his sentence after a chance sighting in Paris, twenty-one years after doing a bunk. It sounded as though the FFL was something you signed up for as a result of PTSD and antisocial personality disorder from the trials of everyday life, then gained a new identity as a Legionnaire and recovered - not the other way around.
Death & the City Book Two Page 7
