The Iron Swamp

by J V Wordsworth

  At the top of the archaic tower, I pushed open the door. Thicker than my body, and considerably taller than Rake's, I had to put my entire weight into it before the behemoth creaked open to reveal a blond girl with her back to us, sitting on a pile of cushions.

  Rake brushed past me through the entrance. "Excuse us," he said, his tone both delicate and hard as he battled with his emotions.

  The girl turned to meet us, but her eyes had long ago lost the ability to see. Her pupils sat below her eyelids like beads floating in milk. Despite this, she was pretty. Irises the color of straw, they made her polluted blond hair and pale skin look almost bronze. There was something disquieting about those eyes, as if they might swallow me if I gazed into them too long. Not distant of 12 cycles, her fringe was cut straight, emphasizing her youth. Wrapped in several layers of sheets, she looked about as formidable as a polystyrene doll, incapable of lifting Kenrey onto that chair.

  Rake asked if she was alright and waited patiently for her to nod.

  "What's your name sweetheart?"

  "Kathryn."

  Rake sat cross legged on the floor next to her. "And have the guards treated you alright since it happened?"

  She nodded.

  "I'm detective Rake, and this is detective Nidess. You're not a suspect in the crime, and you don't have to tell us anything you don't want to." Rake looked at me as if challenging me to disagree. "You just tell us you're not allowed, and we'll accept it. We don't want to get you into trouble."

  She nodded.

  "What happened last night?"

  The girl paused for a click, a tear falling from one eye, while the other remained as dry as the Baesian dunes. "Do you know how old I am?"

  Rake looked as if the question had been a blade twisted into his gut. "Too young."

  She nodded sagely. "But you're not here about that are you? You don't want to know what Kenrey did to me. You want to know who killed him."

  I smiled at her. I'd expected something different, more broken. This girl still had life in her. "I'm afraid so. There is nothing we can do for you."

  "You could try, but you won't."

  My smile faded, I could not let her draw me in, for Rake's sake more than mine. "What happened last night?"

  Another tear rolled away from the only remaining duct. "I was with Kenrey when the wall exploded. It vibrated through my whole body." She pressed her hands against her ears. "I thought I was deaf as well as blind until the alarms started, so I don't know what happened, just like I told the guards. All I wanted to do was find my clothes. I couldn't hear him kill Kenrey.

  "So how do you know it was a man?" I asked, less softly than I could have.

  Rake shot me a look as if he was about to suffocate me with a cushion.

  "All the guards say it was a man. A few of them said he was huge."

  "But you never heard anything to suggest it was a man?"

  Rake was on one knee ready to push me out the room. I knew what he was bursting to say. If Kenrey was to get up and walk out of that room now, Rake would have killed him again. Five cycles distant, I might have agreed, but not now. My father was in exile, my mother dead, and I'd been left to rot in a hole in the ground. I respected their morality, but no longer their method. Sacrifice achieved nothing. The monsters on the hill were too strong and their system entrenched in concrete. To fight them properly meant abiding by the rules and abandoning battles that could not be won.

  I could not save this girl, just as I could not save Sariah. Not even burying her in the heart of The Sodalis would hide her from the SP. If I were to be any use, I had to catch Kenrey's killer, and I would not shrink from it.

  Kathryn cupped her ears as if trying to hear the sea. "My ears bled for hours."

  Rake cautiously put a hand on her shoulder, not touching her with more than his fingertips. "You're alright now. We won't let any of the guards near you. We can even take you home if you want?"

  I ignored him. "When your hearing returned, what was happening?"

  "I felt people grabbing me and pulling me off the bed. I didn't know who it was so I struggled, but that made them angrier. I tried to hold onto the sheets, but I wasn't strong enough. One of them ripped me off the bed and clutched me to his chest while another one put me in hand cuffs and leg bracelets so I couldn't move." She lifted her arms out of the sheets she was wrapped in to show me the red marks where her skin had rubbed against the metal. "I still tried though."

  Rake breathed as if he was expelling a lung full of sand. "Why did they do that?"

  "They thought I killed him. Fools thought I could kill a man of that size." Her tone was full of venom, not the tip of self-pity in it. "Later a man came and removed the braces and told me that they saw the man who actually did it."

  Rake's mouth curled as if he was eating something sour. "They won't touch you again."

  "Agreed," I said. "We'll take you back with us when we leave."

  Kathryn showed no pleasure at this, and why would she? She was probably no worse off in the hands of the guards than those of her pimp. Rake could call it home if it made him feel better, but to her it was probably just another place where people mistreated her.

  "Could you tell us what happened before the explosion?" I said. "Was there anything unusual about last night that you can remember?"

  She shook her head. "Not really, except..." Again her voice failed. Her head sank forward, a possessed look in her drifting eyes.

  "You can tell us," Rake said.

  "I had an accident."

  I hesitated. Rake looked equally baffled, unsure of the correct response. Finally, I said, "Children have accidents."

  Rake shook his head as if I were trying to put my trousers on over my arms, but he had nothing to add.

  To change the subject I said, "What did Kenrey do when you...had your accident?"

  "He hit me."

  The thought of it rankled me as much as it did Rake, though I saw no sign of bruising. "Then what?"

  Rake cut in. "I don't think we need to know about that." He looked set to shut me up.

  I couldn't push him much further, but there were still a few things I needed to know. "Perhaps not, but it would help me to form a clearer picture of the events."

  She nodded slowly. "It isn't uncommon. They give us pills, and sometimes the effects are delayed."

  I knew I needed to push this girl for more information, but I felt as if I had been stuffing myself with rancid food, and Rake's eyes looked like scythes ready to cut down every man within half a kim. "I think we've heard enough," he said.

  "Nearly." I met his gaze for as long as I could. "What happened after he hit you?"

  "You want a fracking diagram you pervert?" Rake shouted. "I need to talk to you." He got to his feet just as I was pulling out the pad again. I held it up to remind him that nowhere in this complex was safe. Likely, not even our houses were safe now. Reens might be monitoring everything he could access, and Rake's outbursts would demonstrate that we couldn't be trusted. If they weren't worried before, then they were now, and soon it wouldn't even matter if we solved the case. People who upset the monsters on the hill fell victim to climbing accidents.

  He pulled my arm round so we were both facing the stairs. "We're still done here." He turned back to the girl. "Kathryn, are you ready to go?"

  She nodded, her sightless pupils moving up and down in the opposite direction to her head.

  "Then we'll be back to pick you up once we have the security footage from the guards."

  I said nothing. Rake was teetering on the edge of a precipice, and I did not wish to provoke any action that might cause him to slip over. I suspected he was right, most of this seemed to have little relevance to the case, and I was suddenly interested in why he was so protective of rape victims when everything else about him was so cruel.

  Chapter 4

  Since the dispute between Rake and the guard, the rest of them were not being cooperative. We followed men in every direction and back again trying
to get access to the camera footage. I must have walked every square met of the complex fifty times until my groin was chafing so badly I could have had an STD. Only the Guard Captain was helpful. Several times when his men tried to evade our requests, he either shouted at them until they gave us what we wanted or found it himself. I had never seen a man so on-edge, swinging his head at the slightest noise, as if being approached by a predator. Kenrey's life was his responsibility, and the only question that remained was how bad the punishment would be.

  Rake had said nothing since we left Kathryn, his face red with the build-up of blood as if someone had clamped the vein leaving his head. It felt as though they were baiting him. Possibly, Reens and Sina had told the guards to screw with us and see what happened. All the forensics teams had packed up, and two out of three buses were already on their way back to the station. Eventually, a guard showed us into a small room where he transferred the footage to our tablets.

  I managed to interview the Guard Captain and a few of the more important guards, but most of the day I spent organizing the two billion police and CSIs running around the compound like a bunch of headless animals on muscle memory. I would have liked to interview a few of the domestic staff as well as the guards, but there was no time. Fortunately, a product of the unlimited manpower was that every person in the compound received an interview, if not by me.

  The murder weapon hadn't been found by day's end despite sweeps covering the whole area several times over. Other than a patch of red tipped grass where one of the guards had been shot, there was little evidence outside Kenrey's quarters that anything untoward had taken place. It was as if the killer had disintegrated during the explosion that first signaled his presence. Forensics would be analyzing overnight, and the hospital said we could not interview the injured guards until morning.

  "Shall we go pick up Kathryn?" I said.

  Initially, the guards were reluctant to tell us where she came from, but after Rake reminded them amid a cannonade of spittle that Reens and Sina had instructed them to give us full disclosure, one of them relented.

  A police slider was waiting for us at the entrance, its once clean black paint now sullied by rust. Little brown spots climbed away from a gash above the right leg where metal had been reduced to flakes. As we approached, the legs disappeared and the machine began to hover, its engine noiselessly active. We placed Kathryn in the back section used to transport criminals while the two of us sat in front. Rake still laconic, I said, "After we drop Kathryn off, you want to come back to mine to discuss the case?"

  He nodded, and that was the end of the conversation.

  *

  When we pulled off the sliderway we were not heading towards a dense population center. The girl didn't have a tablet, so we couldn't get through window security, forcing me to endure almost an hour of Rake's silent rage before we pulled up, well out of our jurisdiction. The building was as isolated as the compound itself, but for a refueling station a few kims back. Like all the relics from the poorer areas of The Kaerosh, the building looked as if it had been dropped from a huge concrete mold in the sky. Most of the walls were a rough gray and full of divots where the icy winds weathered them away, exaggerating their ugliness.

  The closest structure was covered in graffiti. Inflated initials, pictures, and swearing were all over the concrete lumps that littered The Kaerosh, but Kathryn's dwelling had an excess even by our standards. The one that caught my eye was in plain black and as scruffy as any of them.

  The Iron Dump.

  Looking through the mirror at the girl in the back seat, Rake said, "Wait here. I'll handle the pimp."

  "I don't think–" I started.

  "I wasn't giving you a choice." He pulled his gun out of his holster and shoved it in the storage compartment. "Don't want to do anything I might regret."

  He got out, leaving the two of us inside. Part of me wanted to apologize to the girl, but that would imply responsibility when, in truth, I was as helpless as she was. Instead, I sat in silence for a moment before offering, "I wish there was something more I could do for you."

  My parents would have done something.

  Kathryn faced the window as if she could see the dilapidated structures. "Cos is full of people like you detective, decent until it costs you something. You built The Kaerosh as much as Clazran."

  Words of wisdom beyond her cycle. She was obviously smart, but not that smart. Their meaning belonged to someone else, and she was just repeating them. Still, the truth in them grated on me. She was a vessel for my parents' reprehension; a warning that I was not behaving in concord with their sacrosanct philosophy. But they were gone, and The Kaerosh got worse with every cycle. I had my own ideas on how to change it.

  "Stay strong," I said, "And you'll outlive Clazran. This place cannot last forever."

  Unable to sit with her any longer, I got out and followed Rake to the door.

  "Wadda you want?" A slim, handsome man stepped out of the front door. This was presumably Welker, the man in charge of the operation. His black quiff flopped over to the left, his deep blue eyes, like Rake's, brightened his pale skin while tattoos covered his arms in skulls at various stages of degradation.

  Rake stepped forwards pushing the man with a finger. "We want to talk to you." He was taller than the pimp with muscle where the smaller man had none.

  The pimp took a step backwards, off balance from the unexpected push. "Who are yu?" he asked.

  "Police," Rake said. "You need to calm down."

  I swallowed. The instruction calm down was designed universally to do the opposite. Rake was deliberately provoking him.

  The pimp raised his hands into the air. "Look friend–"

  But Rake was having none of it. "I'm not your friend."

  The pimp nodded, raising his hands further as his expression became increasingly grave. "I'm calm. You're the one who looks in need of calmin'."

  "We know what you're doing here," Rake said.

  The man grinned. "So does every monster on the hill. What's your point?"

  "We don't have a point," I said. "He's just saying you need to look after this girl, make sure she is well treated, or we'll be back."

  His eyes narrowed as his face morphed in false shock. "I treat all my girls well."

  The way he emphasized girls made me feel sick. "Make sure you do," I said, but Rake was already talking over me.

  "This girl has done nothing wrong, and she's been through a lot. If something bad happens to her, you won't even see me coming."

  "Threatnin' me won't help yu none." The pimp laughed. "Plice can go away for that these days."

  He was right. We were well out of our jurisdiction, the other side of the Line of Knives. The fact that we had come so far suggested this was no local brothel, but perhaps catered to deviants across the entire nation. If that was true, and Kenrey was representative of the general clientele, then we were dealing with a dangerous man.

  "Don't frak with me, pimp." Rake stepped over the threshold of his property as the pimp retreated, matching every footfall with his own. "If I find out anything has happened to this girl you'll be dead faster than a hodi in a pit of greiger lizards." He was looking for any opportunity to arrest Welker, but the pimp could see it in his eyes. He just grinned, baiting his own trap that would be equally disastrous for Rake. That was Clazran's Kaerosh, where police were afraid to arrest pimps, and everyone feared the monsters on the hill.

  Back in the slider Rake wouldn't look at me. He stared out the window for the 15 minutes it took to get back to the outskirts of Las Hek where city and swamp had melded together in a singular attempt to out-gray each other.

  "This is where you live?" Rake said, as he got out.

  "What did you expect, a house in the shape of a Pailv battle helmet?"

  He gave his signature shrug. "Something a bit nicer."

  Elvedeer dwarfed all the buildings around it, one colossal piece of reinforced concrete blocking out the twin suns. A homeless man lay at the
side of the road motionless except for the trembling of his bottom lip. Even at a distance, I could see the pustules on his neck, little red lumps darkening as they reached the tip.

  Badens.

  All the hobos got it in The Kaerosh. The rot was simply too strong to remain outdoors for long. When they didn't have rib suits the bacteria generally got to them within a cycle. Some of them bought cheap ones that dried their skin until it cracked and bled; then the swamp bacteria got to them even faster. I saw it every day before they put me in the basement. The Las Hek morgue was always so full of homeless people it seemed impossible that any remained, but The Kaerosh churned them out like meat in a grinder.

  I ignored the man as best I could, walking towards the reception with my eyes on my feet. "I'd appreciate if you'd hide your gun," I said to Rake. "My neighbors aren't fond of police."

  He moved his dry-top to cover his gun. "You're braver than I thought, living here."

  I lived here because his father had taken all my money. Earlier, I might have blamed him for that, but not after his reaction to Kathryn. Probably, Rake had suffered more at his father's hands than I.

  Reception was busy. A woman was shouting through the hole in the wall at the man on duty, two women behind her holding babies. One of them looked at me as we went past, but the others were preoccupied. It was either robbery or domestic violence, but the panic in their voices suggested robbery. With DV, they were always more resigned, as if it was partially their fault.

  We got in the functioning elevator and I hit the button for floor 32. "We'll just get the dog and head back out again."

  Rake's voice went suddenly high, "You have a dog?"

  "Lola." A little gray shih tzu with more fur than body. She sat on the rug just behind the door barking softly as we entered.

  I picked her up and gave her a scratch behind the ears. "You want to hold her?"

  He opened his mouth to say something then shook his head.