Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  But what flashed up on my screen was different to the other bodies I’d seen. They had been brutal, carnage. This was not.

  This corpse, laid out and tagged by the forensic Cabal team, wasn’t mauled or shredded at all. The other victims had looked like pulled pork. This new body on the other hand was apparently undamaged.

  I enlarged the photo.

  It was a completely naked and remarkably unblemished female. Judging from body development, hip size, and height, I was guessing adolescent, maybe fourteen, fifteen years old. If anything it looked like a tragic drowning victim. Suicide perhaps.

  What was strikingly odd however was her face.

  She didn’t have one.

  By which I don’t mean it had been removed, kept as some grisly souvenir by the killer. But that wasn’t the case here. There were no wounds. From what I could make out from the photo, she simply had no features, like an unfinished mannequin.

  I stared at the bald, blank mask of skin. No eyes, nose or mouth. Just an empty, flesh-coloured canvas.

  This was something new. Appalling and tragic, but I was intrigued despite myself. Colour me grisly.

  A text box was appended to the image, blinking and waiting to be tapped. Cloves’ notes no doubt. I flicked a finger over it.

  ‘Head of the River. Just washed up. Am here now. Get here when you read this. No fucking clue.’

  Only my boss would truncate sentences for expediency yet take the time and trouble to write out a swear word.

  The timestamp on this message was nearly an hour ago. I checked my watch. 5 PM. It was already getting dark out. I had planned on a chips and dips night – just me, trash TV and the hot coffee I could already smell from the kitchenette – but it seemed instead I had a date with a blank-faced body.

  2.

  South of Carfax, on the Abingdon Road, I found myself at the Head of the River, just as the last smears of orange twilight gave way to the blue bruises of early evening. The road crosses the River Isis here, a relatively modest three span stone bridge. Like most of my city, it’s a blend of old and new, layers of the past and present pressing atop one another like historical lasagne. The stones of old Folly Bridge are ancient and venerable, the tarmac which coats it like a glossy black tongue is less than ten years laid.

  There was no traffic on the bridge this evening. It had been closed off by Cabal. Yellow and black striped tape, fluttering in the breeze, formed temporary barriers at either end, and the reflective bellies of traffic cones glinted in the aftermath of the sunset. I had walked here, as it wasn’t too far from my flat, wearing my cosy Parka. It had been a Christmas gift from Lucy, my lab assistant, and was white with a fur hood. She had bought it because it reminded her of a ‘fluffy version of my lab coat’. I felt I looked like a ridiculous polar bear in it, and that was fine with me as long as I was warm. As I approached I saw the Cabal sign suspended amidst the makeshift barrier, a floating scrolling hologram of text: ‘Detour – Bridge closed due to emergency structural work’.

  Yeah right, I thought, ducking under the tape, making the hologram script flicker like an angry ghost. There were a couple of police officers milling around in hi-viz jackets, looking a little lost and trying to direct what traffic there was elsewhere. I guessed everyone else was under the bridge, down in the mud where the action was. One of the officers approached me, looking flustered as I strolled out onto the stone, but I flashed my ID at him and his frown faded. I’m very proud of my ID. It’s laminated and everything. No expense spared.

  “Dr Harkness? Servant Cloves said to keep an eye out for you. Go right through.”

  “She down below?” I asked, peering over the side. Down by the water’s edge in the gathering evening shadows, several portable floodlights had been erected. They looked like odd silver flamingos stalking the muddy riverbank. Their phosphorus heads illuminated the site with bright artificial daylight. There was a large white plastic tent, glowing from within, and six or seven forensics, clad head to toe in rustling white over-suits. They were all hooded and masked in the usual anonymous forensic way. Always made me wonder how they told each other apart. They squelched through the mud and water and in and out of the tent like busy white ants.

  The policeman peered over the side with me. “On the shore?” He raised his eyebrows. “No no, Servant Cloves is in the Head.” I nodded with a small smile at his scandalised face. I couldn’t really picture Veronica Cloves knee deep in river mud either, wading around a corpse in the dark wearing £800 vintage Manolo Blahniks.

  It wasn’t that my boss was particularly squeamish. In fact I’d yet to find anything that could make the woman so much as flinch. It was that she was head of operations and the media’s darling. In a job where your projected image was everything, wallowing around like a damp troll in the mud would not be something Cloves would lower herself to. That was what underlings were for. I’d never actually heard her say ‘minions’ but I knew she was thinking it when she looked at the rest of us.

  “Thanks.” I patted the copper on the arm in a friendly manner and carried on across the bridge. On the north bank was the Head of the River itself. A medium sized hotel, rustic and picturesque. Before the wars, it had been a popular place. Good food, real ales, beer garden terrace rolling down to the water’s edge. A lot of boating launched from here once. People punting about on the Isis, messing around on the water. Christchurch Meadow is just downstream. It must have all been adorably Jeremy Fisher once upon a time.

  There wasn’t a lot of pleasure cruising these days. People had other things to worry about in post-apocalyptic New Oxford. Since the end of the world came and went, our Halcyon days of dodging wasps in beer gardens are less frequent than once they were. If there was wind in the willows these days, it was an ill wind.

  The Head of the River was still a public house – even the apocalypse couldn’t remove the essential British need for good pubs – but it had also become a popular meeting place for many of the great and good of the Mankind Movement. GOs don’t have equal rights with humans. It's a hot topic at the moment. Incendiary in every sense. What rights GOs do have is very much a murky grey area. While it is technically illegal for any establishment to be ‘human patrons only’, if any GO wandered in here asking for a stiff sherry, they would certainly receive a cool reception. Personally, I wasn’t wild about Mankind Movement haunts myself; the MM was a bit of an Old Boys’ network in my opinion, all creaky leather wingback chairs and brandy, but Cloves would commandeer wherever she saw fit in a pinch. She wasn’t one to be cowed by any establishment. She had weight.

  There were only a few drinkers in the pub at this hour. Give it a couple of hours and the place would be filled. New Oxfordians are not overly fond of the dark. We like to gather. Somewhere well lit, and preferably with something decent on tap.

  Right now, however, there were only a few hardcore drinkers spotted around: a chap reading a paperback in one of the old chairs by the fire, and a couple playing cribbage. I spotted Cloves immediately in the warm amber lamplight of the interior, amid the smell of bitter ale and slightly musty furnishings. She had taken over a corner booth, box files and mobile Datascreen set up on the table before her. A couple of suited men with anonymous and humourless faces were milling around her like ant drones around the queen, both on their mobiles (presumably not to each other).

  They were Ghosts. Not actual, rattling chains and wailing ghosts, of course. That’s the name we give to Cabal’s private agents. They all look alike to me, bland, forgettable. I suppose that’s rather the point. Cabal use them as clean-up crew, personal security, whatever’s needed. They’re one level above the police force, which Cabal does not (officially) influence. Kind of like secret service I suppose. I always expected them to all be wearing sunglasses and talking into earpieces.

  Cloves herself could never look anonymous. Cabal may be a faceless and sober bureaucracy, but it was at least self-aware enough to know that it needed some form of human visage. Someone to make them appear less a
lien and totalitarian to the masses. This was Cloves. She was wearing a sharp, shoulder-padded dress suit, which would have made her look like an expensive and serious lawyer, were it not for the fact that it was boldly, almost offensively tangerine, and offset with a hideous and enormous spider-like black brooch.. The jewellery matched her customary net-jet choker.

  Seeing me enter, she raised her glass and shook it impatiently at me from across the room. A half-empty Bloody Mary. Her other hand held her phone to her ear. She looked rather harassed.

  I nodded wearily, getting the message, and crossed to the bar, ordering another drink for her and a beer for myself. Not super-professional, but it always helps to have a drink inside you when you’re about to see a dead body. I made a mental note as I carried our drinks over that this was going on the company tab.

  The two Ghosts eyed me suspiciously like sombre trolls, flanking Cloves on either side. I gave them my friendliest smile, which they both ignored. Cloves put her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone and glanced up at them.

  “Out,” she snapped, as though they were bothersome children. “Go loom elsewhere.”

  Dismissed, the two large men obediently disappeared without a word. I scooted in opposite Cloves, sliding her drink across to her.

  “She’s just walked in,” she said into the phone. “Yes I know, but she’s here now, Director. I’ll brief her and call you back.”

  I sipped my beer gingerly while Cloves listened for a few seconds, nodding and stirring her Bloody Mary with a thin stick of celery. Finally she hung up and slammed the phone down on the table.

  “What the hell took you so long to get here?”

  “I was out,” I said calmly. “I don’t actually work weekends, you know.”

  “You work whenever I tell you to bloody well work,” she snapped. “The nature of the job, Doctor. Or perhaps I should put out a bulletin on the DataStream requesting that people only die during working hours Monday to Friday, if you think that might help.”

  “Which job is this then?” I asked. “Actual laboratory bloodwork, which is my chosen profession, or riding around in the mystery machine solving diabolical capers?”

  Cloves looked confused. “I have no idea what you’re referring to, Harkness,” she said. “No one ever does. It gets very wearisome.”

  Tell me about it, I thought.

  “You’re here because you’re my specialist in weird shit.” She waggled her celery stick at me. “Or at least that will have to do as a title until I can come up with anything better. You’re the only one on team who’s had exposure to vampires, Bonewalkers and the Pale, and lived through all three. GOs are weird shit, so when weird shit lands in my lap, you dust it off.”

  I ignored her complimentary comments. “Can I see the body?” I asked, feeling rather ghoulish. I wasn’t entirely sure why we were sitting in the pub when an enigmatic corpse was under the bridge nearby like a faceless doll.

  Cloves’ face tightened, and she lowered her voice. “There is no body,” she said. “At least, as far as anyone outside of the Cabal unit on site here is concerned. The bridge is closed for repair. I have no idea what we’re dealing with here. It’s not like anything we have on file.” She sipped her Bloody Mary, looking furtive. “Director Coldwater wants a very tight lid on this until we know what’s what, understood?”

  “Director who?” I asked. I have only the vaguest idea how the tangled web of higher Cabal bureaucracy works. I know that the highest of the high, Alistair Rutheridge, was killed and turned into a ghoul by a vampire of my acquaintance a few months back, but figureheads are always quickly replaceable. We have a new noble leader now. All slick hair and white teeth. I forget his name.

  “There are seven board directors of Cabal,” Cloves said. “These are big league players I’m talking about here, Harkness. They don’t dirty their hands with our little lives. When one of the board directors get involved, we don’t fuck up. Director Coldwater, one of said seven, is deeply concerned about the murders we’ve made no headway on.” She drummed her tangerine-painted nails on the wooden table irritably. “With the tensions between the Tribals and Scott Enterprises right now, we need to close the case on that and catch whatever psycho is offing citizens. We do not also have the luxury of dealing with brand new…” She flailed around for words.

  “Weird shit?” I offered helpfully. I wouldn’t have ever thought it possible, but Cloves actually seemed a little intimidated by this director. Who knew? Even monsters have monsters under their beds.

  She nodded. “Three murders, all in the Portmeadow district. The richest and supposedly safest part of New Oxford. All savage and all unrelated. The victims didn’t know each other, they didn’t interact, they didn’t even look similar, so no victim profiling. We have nothing to link them together except the modus operandi, which appears to be shred, gnaw and eviscerate.” She narrowed her eyes. “And so far you’ve hardly shed any light on them for me at all, might I add.”

  “All you’ve given me is photos of corpses to work from. Morgue pictures, coroners’ reports. You haven’t even let me near the actual bodies. I don’t even know their names, so I don’t know how you expect me to give you anything but a vague medical opinion on cause of death. You Cabal Servants. You’re all so cloak and dagger. I’ve asked you before, open the files to me. I need the whole picture or I have no idea what I’m supposed to be dealing with. I don’t know what you expect from me other than guesses.”

  Cloves shook her head. “I don’t have clearance to. This is total blackout as far as Cabal goes, Harkness. The board directors have got us all blind on the full facts. Not just you.” She sipped her drink, looking peeved. Cloves hated being out of the loop. “Maybe this fun new corpse will give me some leverage with the directors though. If things have escalated, I need full access to the files, and when I have it, so will you…” She looked me over. “…More or less. Leave it with me. I’ll make some calls once we know what we have here.”

  “So you think this new body is related somehow?” I asked.

  “How the hell should I know?” Cloves said. “I’m having it bagged and tagged and shipped to Blue Lab before anyone else can claim and quarantine it. There, your wish is granted, you get a real life corpse to play with, not just photos. Happy birthday.” She clinked her glass against my beer bottle. “But you’re here now because I want your eyes on this first, in situ. Get down to the bank and tell me what the hell that thing is…because it sure as hell doesn’t look human to me.”

  I considered asking if I could finish my drink first, but it seemed a silly question, and it would have been unprofessional of me to approach the death scene with a bottle in hand. This wasn’t the Cabal company barbecue. So I left it and Cloves and made my way outside, across the terrace to the steps which led down to the floodlit, crowded and, above all, muddy riverbank.

  Hmm. My white parka may not have been the best choice of outfit.

  3.

  There were more forensics under Folly Bridge than I’d imagined. Twenty or so crime scene Cabal minions, all rustling and white suited, bustling around one another and making it very difficult for me to make out what was actually going on. The floodlights whitewashed the scene, eradicating every twilight shadow from the gloomy underside of the bridge. Data-gathering drones whirred around their feet like robot rats. Nobody offered me a white suit, but one of the forensics, after viewing my clearance (laminated for his convenience) at least had the good grace to furnish me with waterproof boots and a surgical mask, presumably just so I wouldn’t feel left out.

  He (I think it was a man; it’s so hard to tell in those things) led me through the ankle-deep water of the Isis to the centre of the floodlights. “Dr Denison? She’s here.” He called out, muffled. “Cloves’ woman.”

  Here at the centre of things, crouching low over an ominous white plastic tarp, Dr Denison looked up. I couldn’t see most of his face, but his eyes crinkled in a smile. “Thank God,” he said gruffly. “Someone a little more qualifie
d at last.” He flicked his eyes at my escort. “This is not ‘Cloves’ woman’, Anderson. This is Dr Harkness, and she’s the closest we have to a specialist in this kind of thing.”

  “Good to see you again, Peter,” I greeted him. Peter Denison was a good guy. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. I’d worked with him before, time served in the labs, before I rose to the dizzying heights of Blue Lab toxicology. He had given up the closeted lab rat life years ago to do field work, out there getting his hands dirty, criminal forensics. He had always poked fun at the fact I enjoyed the safety of the lab, and I had accused him of being a thrill-seeking maniac doctor. ‘Dr Dee’. And now here I was, out in the field, same as him, whether I wanted to be or not. Ah life, what giddy larks you throw our way.

  “I’d shake your hand, Phoebe, but given the circumstances, probably not the best place. Besides our mystery guest, there are rats and God knows what else under here. The water’s none too clean either. Welcome to my glamorous job.”

  “I like rats,” I replied, muttering into my mask with a shrug.

  The forensic identified as Anderson looked a little abashed. “Sorry Dr Harkness, I didn’t realise it was actually you yourself coming down.” I swear he was blushing on what small portion of his face was visible between the tight white plastic hood and germ mask. “…Is it true what they say?”

  Denison seemed to give his colleague a warning look from his crouched position by the tarp. I just looked confused.

  “Um, I have no idea,” I admitted. “What do they say?”