The Iron Swamp

by J V Wordsworth

  By the time I was finished working through all the data, there were three things that struck me as suspicious. Firstly, was the absence of Colson appearing on any of the three days despite someone saying she was there. Secondly, was the number of times a boy named Johan Carter left and came back during the day, which by the end I stopped counting, and lastly, was the late exit of a girl I could not identify from personnel files who seemed to have no reason to be there at that time.

  The latter two probably had fairly innocuous causes, such as Carter was a lazing off work, and the girl fell asleep on her shift, but in the case of the girl from the compound's testimony and Colson's absence in the security footage, something was wrong.

  Chapter 18

  20/10/2256 FC

  It was not until J.10 the next morning after a restless night's sleep that I realized I knew who the killer was. It was staring me in the face the whole time and yet somehow overlooked. As I suspected all along, it came down to timing.

  I called Becky. I had to tell someone, but she wasn't answering. I tried again, but she was ignoring me. I sent her a message saying that I knew who the killer was and she should call me when she woke up, adding a few exclamation points at the end.

  I waited a few minutes for a call, but nothing came, and my adrenaline died down. Suddenly, I was tired. I went for a shower, hoping that I would have a message from Becky when I came out.

  I didn't. I sent her another message apologizing for not trusting her and explaining the exclamation points were because I was excited, not because I was angry.

  Still with no response, I thought about sending another one, but I'd made enough of a fool of myself for one morning. I stumbled around the apartment for a few minutes consolidating the details in my head, then I changed my mind again and sent her a message saying if she could forgive me I would buy her breakfast at Molvinos.

  The restaurant looked like an old casino which had been hit by a hurricane. Game machines were turned over to use as tables, pinned to the ceiling, and placed at odd angles along the wall. The bar was an old row boat turned sideways with a plank across the top. Held together with a few lines of wire, it was deceptively stable beneath the weight of leaning patrons.

  "Molvinos breakfast, please," I said to the barman. I was about to order a bottle of champagne, but a quick glance at the price list and I downsized it to a pint of shindy. The smell of the unfinished Kononber as I'd poured it down the sink put me off ordering a beer.

  "I know you." The barman squinted at me as if I was a picture of a famous person on the far wall. "You're the guy who stood up to those corrupt policemen trying to frame people for things."

  I nodded. Apparently my 15 minutes of fame were not completely over.

  "Well in that case, you eat off Molvinos this morning partner." He served me my drink on a coaster shaped like a pair of sunglasses. "You been in here a few times, haven't you, before the ruckus? I remember you. How's the case going?"

  I looked round, but with no trace of Becky he was as good a person as any. "Just solved it this morning."

  He beamed at me and poured himself a drink. The froth not quite spilling over the top, he lifted it over the bar. "Cheers."

  We clinked glasses, and a bit of Becky's absence melted away. "So," he said, "who did it then?"

  I laughed, slightly nervous that he was being serious. "Afraid I've not had nearly enough drink to get myself into that much trouble."

  He winked at me, his huge mustache bending upwards with his smile. "Fair enough. Anything you can tell me?"

  "She's pretty fracking smart, and catching her isn't going to be easy."

  He nodded. "But not as smart as the man who caught her, eh?"

  I smiled. "Luck." I wasn't being modest. The details were there, but I would never have connected the dots had it not been for several incidents that she could never have predicted. "And mercy," I added. For if she hadn't left Hobb to spill his information and then commit suicide, even though she must have known that he was not safe to be left alive, I would never have caught her. Perhaps she didn't care what happened to her now; the murder of Kenrey was the purpose of her existence, but I didn't think so. People who only cared about the murder didn't plan their exits so well.

  I took a sip of shindy and saw Becky appear the other side of the glass. She was almost unrecognizable in her hood, mist goggles, and scarf that left only her crooked nose uncovered.

  We looked at each other for several clicks while she decided whether to come in. I dismissed a hundred manipulations in the time she stood there, leaving the decision as much up to her as I could. I was never going to trust people, but I wanted to trust one person. That didn't seem so stupid.

  When she finally pushed open the door and walked past a screen with a quilla racing through the yellow rings of a hoopla course, I realized I was holding my breath.

  "Go on then, Boss, who did it?"

  Some of me wanted to skip over the fight and pretend it never happened, talking about the case until my tongue was tired, but I knew as long as our issues remained unresolved they would cast a shadow over our relationship.

  "I like you," I said, summoning the courage to say what I'd practiced. "From the moment I first saw you, a switch in me just clicked. I'm not asking you to reciprocate anything. You're a young and attractive girl, and I'm an old, ugly dwarf, but you wanted to hear something honest so there it is."

  Becky pulled a stool away from the bar and perched on the edge, one leg still on the ground. "That's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me." She placed a hand on top of mine so delicately it tickled the hairs on my skin. "I feel strongly about you too. I never would have cared about your trust if I didn't." She paused as if considering what to say next. "Just not in that way."

  I forced myself to smile. "I never imagined you did."

  She kept her hand on mine, gripping slightly harder. "We haven't been together all that long, but already you feel like a sort of brother to me."

  I nodded as if she could never have said anything else. "At least you didn't say father."

  Her matte lips widened into the old predatory grin. "Well, an older brother."

  I laughed despite myself. "Obviously."

  After a moment where there was nowhere to look but at each other, she said, "You owe me breakfast."

  Grateful for the distraction, I caught the barman's eye, and he wandered over. "Can I have another full breakfast please and a pint of..."

  "Red rum please."

  The barman winked at me again, and I grinned uneasily, pretending I didn't understand the implication. "Shall we get a table?"

  She nodded, and we weaved our way through the holotables and screens until we found a free one we could sit at where we couldn't be overheard.

  Becky drank deep into the red rum as the barman placed it on the table. "Come on, tell me who did it then."

  "Laurie Colson." The little disfigured girl who looked outwardly no more competent than Hobb. I had made a mistake there. The face was malformed, but the brain behind it was strong, dangerous even.

  Becky's piercing bristled in her nose. "Laurie wouldn't hurt a fly!"

  I looked to make sure the bartender was out of earshot. "Her motives are unclear." I knew the two of them were friendly, if not friends.

  "I thought she couldn't be the killer because she wasn't there the day Kenrey was killed. There was no way for her to get onto the premises."

  "That was what I thought, but when Julia Wenling said she saw Colson at the compound after Hobb's suicide, I went over the security footage again. I knew after Colson didn't appear at the front gate that one of them was up to something. "It was when I watched Hobb take the bins outside straight from Kenrey's room that I realized the killer could get out of the compound via the bins."

  Becky gulped enough red rum to make me hope there wasn't any rum in it. "So it was that simple?"

  "There was still one major problem. Colson must have got out via the bins, but she couldn't have got in
that way because she was seen on the security footage walking in and out of the front entrance after Hobb brought the bins in for the final time before the murder. When Hobb committed suicide, the security camera at the bin gate was turned off, so she could have got in unseen then, but that didn't apply on the day of Kenrey's death."

  The barman brought over two breakfasts containing more meat than a kraaken's tentacle, and we dug in. The mixture of grease and protein was impossible to break away from, so not wanting to leave the story until I finished, I continued to talk with a mouth full of food. "That almost convinced me I was looking at the wrong person, except for when I remembered her DNA was found at the crime scene."

  Becky scraped a chili sausage off her fork with her teeth. "So? I thought everyone's DNA was at the crime scene."

  "Except that Dollews said that the DNA samples had to have got there over the last two days. Everyone else was in work during those two days, but Colson wasn't."

  "Yes she was. I told you she came in for a bit the day before the murder despite the fact that she was sick."

  "But during the time she was in, she never went anywhere near Kenrey's quarters. I have no doubt she intended to, but Mrs. Jason forced her to leave again, as you said."

  Becky interrupted me. "Perhaps she transferred a hair or a skin cell or something to someone else, or a bit of her DNA blew in from outside."

  I shrugged. "It's possible, but I spoke to the new guy in charge of the science division early this morning and he says that any DNA coming from outside would be more decayed. The chance of someone else carrying it in and then dropping it while in the room are hundreds of thousands to one, maybe more. For me, that was proof enough. It was her. I just didn't know how she did it."

  Becky was eating faster than me despite my hunger. "Maybe that's enough to convince you, but not me."

  There was no point in pushing it, so I left the issue alone. Some people didn't trust things they couldn't see. Juries, judges, and policemen all believed with their eyes. DNA alone, even when it offered conclusive proof, was not enough. To them DNA evidence was little more than a witness statement from a scientist with the same fallibility.

  Becky would never believe me because she had no reason to. I had never told her about the girls Kenrey raped, not even my suspicions about Liegon and Benrick. But now I was finally certain that she wasn't the killer, she had a right to know the full story.

  It would be safer for her not to know. Reens had instructed me to tell no one, and I had already let it slip once. The punishment for breaking the official secrets act a second time would be severe. It was selfish to tell her, but if I continued to keep the same secrets then nothing would change, and she would leave again. I could not return to being alone.

  I smiled sadly at her, relieving myself of one burden to replace it with another. "I'm going to tell you something about the case that you don't know, but you can't tell anyone, or both our lives will be in danger." I told her about Philip Rake and the pimp he killed, Kathryn, and the other girls Kenrey had raped. Everything.

  When I finished, Becky was no longer eating. "That sick frak."

  I nodded. "It was Kenrey's paranoia that got him killed. He didn't want anyone to know that he was having sex with underage girls, so he had them wrap up in so many layers and hoods that they were unidentifiable as humans. If any of the guards stole the security footage and showed it to the police or the press, they would be laughed out of the building."

  "I thought whoever did it came through the window?"

  I shook my head. "I was wrong. If the member of staff was present on the day, they could have got in that way, but Colson would never have made it past the front gate. She had to find another way in, and her method of entry took her straight past the guards."

  "With this hooker girl?" Becky sounded skeptical.

  "They must have practiced at it for months to get the walk right, with Kathryn walking on top of Laurie's feet. It's not easy, and your knees stick out like you're marching, but it's barely noticeable under the robes, especially to a bunch of disinterested guards who think they're looking at a blind girl in high heels. The only difference is the height. Colson is taller than Kathryn, so I called Lesgech and got him to send me all the footage of Kathryn from previous occasions. He was hesitant, but lately I've found I'm a hard man to say no to."

  "And?"

  "On the day of Kenrey's death, Kathryn was over a hands breadth taller than normal. Some of that might be explained by the amount of layers she was wearing, but not all of it."

  "But it could be explained by footwear," added Becky. "You said they sometimes wore heels to make them look taller, which might also explain her funny walk."

  I shook my head. "I thought the same thing, but the photos of the scene show she wasn't wearing heels that day."

  "I still find it difficult to believe Laurie Colson is a murderer. There is no way she could lift Kenrey onto that chair even if she had help."

  I smiled. "For a while the chair vexed me as well, but I know how they did it now. Signey told us that Kenrey's belly had pooled blood where someone had been pushing against it. Kathryn must have got beneath Kenrey and pushed up with her legs while Colson pulled him onto the chair." I was right the whole time. Like the hole in the wall and Peti's blood, the dead man's chair was just another deception. Colson was a meticulous planner, and every aspect of Kenrey's death had been thought about.

  Becky was no longer listening. Her breakfast gone, she followed the zigzag patterns on the table screen with her knife.

  "What is it, Becky?"

  "I'm not sure I want to catch the person who killed a rapist pedophile. You read all those comics about vigilante heroes more than anyone. Doesn't this sound like the sort of person we should be helping?"

  My mother bought me my first superhero comic when I was nine, not long after I received my first booklet. Before that I was trusted only with paper books intended to be dropped and destroyed by children too young to handle electronics. It felt so adult to be given a booklet that even the most muddled garbage seemed like skilled storytelling. Sergeant Kearo, the soldier who always bested his foes with strength, wit, honesty, and decency was the hero of my youth. When I was eleven I even wanted to join the army. But in reality, Sergeant Kaero would be stripped of his rank the first time he disobeyed the orders of the incompetent General. Such people could not exist in The Iron Swamp.

  I offered Becky the explanation I knew she would not accept. "In The Kaerosh, rapists are more likely to be killed by rapists than their victims. We don't know Colson's motives for doing what she did, and it isn't our job to ask–"

  "But if we don't ask then who will?" She pushed her plate away. "Not Hayson or Clazran. Cythuria! They already tried to convict two innocent people. They sure as anything aren't going to care about the motives of the guilty one."

  I was starting to feel a bit full, and finally swallowed the contents of my mouth without replacing it. "I don't need to ask because it's as plain as the deformations on her face. Revenge. It's always the same. And revenge consumes the afflicter as much as the afflicted. She helps no one, and we help no one by allowing her to continue."

  "It helped the child that would have been raped."

  I nodded to placate her anger. "In some small way, yes, but Kathryn is still a slave imprisoned by people beyond reproach. She will be raped again and again until she is too old and too broken to continue."

  "Then those are the people we should be fighting. Laurie wasn't a bad person. I think she wants to help."

  I didn't say Colson couldn't be trusted. Becky was so like my mother that I could have been having the exact same conversation with her. Perhaps I hired her for that reason. Although I was not willing to sacrifice myself in the fight against the state as my mother was, neither did I want to become an agent of the system. I needed someone to argue the counterpoint. "We can't fight them, Becky, we would be destroyed. I want The Kaerosh to change as much as you, but that sort of thing takes gener
ations and isn't affected by little people like you and me. To do the maximum good we must aim smaller and survive longer."

  Becky shook her head. "That's cowardice."

  "To do otherwise around men like Clazran is suicide. Colson is smart, but she's young, and I have already caught her. She won't live out the cycle even if I do nothing, while Kenrey will be replaced by someone a little better or a little worse, but basically the same for cycle upon time. People like Colson don't do Cos any good; they just make it more violent."

  Was Liegon better than Kenrey? It was unlikely she raped children, but the protest and the debates that had filled every news site since suggested that, on a macroscopic scale, she was much worse. The Felycian church had sparked one Carasaki Rebellion, and Liegon's rise to power was a portent of history repeating itself. It was possible that Kenrey was the only obstacle standing in her way, and Colson was her agent to remove it. Becky did not want to hear it, but that would make the little deformed girl no better than a common assassin.

  "You're rationalizing," Becky said. "Laurie won't get a fair trial. No one will ever be told Kenrey was a child rapist. All they will see is a deformed girl who killed a bishon."

  "I know, just as she did when she slit Kenrey's throat. That isn't our responsibility."

  "Then who will take responsibility?"

  I sighed. "If I don't solve this case then I won't last long. I've made too many enemies. I never asked for this case, but I'm now in a situation where I have to solve it."

  Becky looked away, her hair swinging to conceal a burgundy frown.

  "And there is another thing," I continued. "Clazran promised that if I solve the case he will release an innocent woman from prison. My last case, the one that put me in the basement, was a woman who got framed for a crime she didn't commit. I told Clazran he could count on my loyalty if he got her acquitted. Stupid thing to do, but if I solve it, he may let her out."