Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

  “How curious,” Coldwater said, sounding fascinated. “So these bites were unpleasant for you?”

  “Yes,” I said flatly. “Extremely.”

  “Interesting.” She jotted something down on her paperwork, not remotely concerned by my torture. Very heartening.

  “And yet you experienced these benefits you speak of?” the papery man asked.

  I nodded. “I had been in a motorcycle accident. I’m fairly sure my arm and a few ribs were broken. But after his draining, I had nothing worse than a headache.” And a little mental scarring, I added to myself.

  “Remarkable,” the first panel member considered. The oldest of them all, by my guess. “Such potential. Imagine what could be achieved if we could harness this?”

  “With respect, Sir,” I said. “I don’t think you would find the vampires very keen to be harnessed. They are a very…independent culture.”

  The board ignored me utterly for a few minutes, muttering quietly amongst themselves. I sat feeling rather surplus to needs. I wished very much that there were windows in the room. I was here for an interview, but I felt more as though I were on trial.

  Eventually they turned their attention back to me. “It is clear to this council,” Jowly said. “…That this research requires further data and should be continued. You are indeed in a unique position, having an unprecedented history of interaction with the GOs. Therefore the request submitted by Servant Cloves to instate yourself as official Cabal-GO Liaison is granted, under the strict supervision and direction of Cloves herself, who shall in turn answer to this council, and to the Primus Minister.”

  Great.

  “This vampire, your source of information on the GOs.” He consulted his paperwork. “…Allesandro. You will continue to foster a mutual trust between his kind and Cabal. It may be beneficial.”

  How I was supposed to achieve that when I barely trusted Cabal myself, I wasn’t sure.

  “I haven’t seen the vampire in months,” I pointed out. “He’s Clan Master now. That’s rather a big deal amongst his kind. He doesn’t…need me…for anything.”

  “Well.” Director Coldwater closed my file on the table, tilting her head to one side as she smiled over at me. “We shall have to ensure that you are indispensable then, won’t we?”

  “Servant Cloves has requested full disclosure on a recent series of crimes committed in Portmeadow,” the youngest of the men said briskly, before I had a chance to respond. “It is the decision of this council that this disclosure be granted, and that as newly instated Cabal-GO Liaison, you are to make yourself fully available to assist her in her investigations. Please advise her that the relevant files will be downloaded to her Datascreen and available for viewing within the hour.”

  Bingo. I could practically hear Cloves smirking from the next room.

  6.

  I had hoped to be allowed to go home, just a decadent wish to maybe get some sleep, actually eat something, act like a normal person with a nine to five job. Cloves had other ideas, however. She was grimly triumphant that the full files were now open to her. I felt like a genie who had managed to grant one of her three wishes, slightly worried about what the next two might be. She wanted to look over the files immediately of course, and was not about to let me out of her sight. The option of her coming back to my place was repellent in equal measure to both of us. So I was ferried at her insistence to her own home, the luxury penthouse apartment she kept in Portmeadow.

  Cabal Servants were paid well. Veronica Cloves, official spin doctor, darling of the DataStream and semi-celebrity, even more so.

  Everywhere in this district was opulent, Veronica Cloves’ home was no exception.

  Before the Pale Wars, Portmeadow and Burgess Field had been a verdant green sweep of countryside. When we built the wall, we kept this land inside, and every inch of it now was developed into the richest district in New Oxford. Towering glass and chrome towers, luxury homes. It was where the rich, powerful and famous lived. It was unfortunately also where the recent murders had all taken place, so I wasn’t wild about going there.

  I had been to Cloves’ apartment once before. It was a surprise to me at the time. Given that in both appearance and manner, the woman reminded me of Cruella DeVille on a very bad day, I had expected her living quarters to be equally tasteless, zebra print wallpaper, dripping diamante chandeliers and flocking. Such flocking.

  Cloves’ suite was enormous and theatrical, a vast loft space. One wall was entirely composed of sloping glass, but the room was decorated in creams and soft whites. Minimalist leather sofas, thoughtfully placed art deco furniture. Understated. I balked to even use that word in connection to my superior, but there it was. I suspected that Cloves had little interest in any kind of home life, and had left the entire design to the decorator. She never struck me as the homey type. I couldn’t picture her baking muffins in the sleek chrome kitchen at weekends. In fact, the only thing which looked frequently used in the whole penthouse was her workstation: a highly operational, top of the line model Datascreen which made mine look like something you needed to crank with a handle.

  Cloves wasted no time once we arrived. I wasn’t even offered coffee. She slid into a chair behind her desk, downloading the files she had briefly read. The desk faced a wall projection screen which hung above her tall open fireplace, fake of course, but tastefully rendered in angular white marble. The fireplace, I mean, not the wall screen. That would be decadent even for Cloves.

  She had scanned the files during the drive, which had made me nervous enough. I’d rather she kept her eyes on the road, but she drove so badly, everyone else tended to get out of her way.

  With nothing better to do while she set things up, I wandered over to the wall of glass and peered out at this most modern part of New Oxford. Executive city living in all its ostentatious splendour surrounded us. It was only lunchtime, but I had worked through the night with Griff on the autopsy, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do anything else today except go home and sleep. I needed a shot of Epsilon in a couple of hours if I wasn’t going to hulk out and devolve into a gibbering ball of rage. I’m sure Cloves wouldn’t appreciate that happening here. Not with these cream carpets.

  “Admiring the view?” Cloves asked. “I have to admit, it’s a stunning one.”

  I shrugged. “I think it probably looked better before the war,” I said. “Did you know this whole area used to be an actual meadow, three hundred acres of grazing land?”

  If Cloves was listening to me, she gave no sign.

  “It was never ploughed,” I went on. “It was a gift to the freemen of old Oxford by Alfred the Great. He founded the city you know. He gave the land for their help in defending the kingdom against the Danes. They could graze their animals free of charge.”

  Cloves snorted. “Well they sure as hell can’t now.” Her fingers flicked across her screen. “The only thing grazing out there in my neighbourhood is a Tribal if you ask me, and it’s grazing on people.”

  “In the winter, the meadow used to flood,” I continued, looking out over the towers. “Then it would freeze, a huge safe ice rink. And in summer, the whole thing would be filled with buttercups.”

  “Times change,” Cloves said dispassionately. “Why do you know all this useless information, Harkness?”

  “I don’t think it’s useless,” I countered. “So much of our old world was lost in the wars. When the wall went up. It’s important. Someone should remember it.”

  “That civilisation is gone,” my supervisor told me. “They killed themselves. We have to pick up their pieces.”

  “Down there on the river,” I told her, looking down at the glittering Isis far below. “Did you know that’s the very spot where Charles Dodgson rowed in a boat, back in 1862, with three young girls?”

  “Who?”

  I glanced up at her. “Lewis Carroll.” I sighed. “The girls were Lorina, Edith and Alice Liddell. While they made their way by rowboat slowly up from Folly Bridge, where we we
re yesterday evening, and then on to Godstow, the girls asked him to entertain them with a story. It went on to become Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

  Cloves had finished loading the files. She stood up from her desk.

  “Surely even you’ve heard of that?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she replied. “We managed to save one copy of the text during the wars. It’s housed in the Bod now. I’m not a complete philistine, you know, Harkness. A lot of things we wanted to save were lost, however.”

  “I didn’t know you were involved in trying to save the culture of the old world?”

  “I wasn’t always Cabal,” she said simply. “And I used to have a lot more free time.” She walked to the screen. “Trouble is, when it comes to literature, art or music, or saving people, I would choose the people first. They’re the important ones. Humanity must survive, Harkness. When the walls went up, and we corralled what we could, I would have crawled over the Mona Lisa and ground it into the mud if it meant I could drag one more person out of the wild and into the safety of this city. Humanity first. People are what matter, they can make more art and music later, when there’s peace.”

  “And when will that be?” I wondered. Portmeadow was certainly never going to be a verdant and idyllic meadowland again. Now it was the exclusive luxury homes of the richest, and possibly most morally vacuous of remaining humanity.

  “Well, certainly not while bodies keep turning up mangled on the doorstep,” Cloves said. “We don’t have enough humans left to allow GOs to pick us off. Which rather brings us to the task in hand.”

  I moved away from the window wall and sank into a chair, as interested as she no doubt was as to what information the full files could give us.

  “Okay, pay attention,” Cloves said, clutching a remote in hand like a wicked fairy with a magic wand. She was staring at the wall screen, standing with her arms folded like a terrifying lecturer. “This is what we know so far.”

  An image appeared on the wallboard, a landscape photograph of sleek, modern towers, like pinnacles of crystal, pathways and parkland dotted between them. Portmeadow. It reminded me of the sleekest parts of Tokyo. Or how Tokyo used to look anyway. These days it was a burned out shell.

  “Three murders,” Cloves said in a business-like tone. “All in the same area, all within a two mile radius of this district. Victims appear unrelated, all attacked, mauled and basically shredded. We believe the murders were committed on site, which is impressive, given the security in this district. Appears to be the work of the same person or people each time.” She glanced at me. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen in Portmeadow, Harkness. Maybe in the slums over in the Slade, but residents of New Oxford’s most prime real estate pay through the nose precisely because of the safety. It’s an almost GO-free area. Besides the Bonewalkers of course.”

  “The victims?” I prompted, riled by Cloves’ assumption that the deaths were more shocking because they had happened to rich folk in a prosperous neighbourhood.

  Cloves clicked the clicker, and the picture changed. “Contestant number one,” she said, rather ghoulishly. “Simon King.” The photo appeared to be a driving license. It showed a rather chinless forty-something man with narrow shoulders, thinning hair, and the kind of vacant expression almost unavoidable on driving licences. “Thirty seven, Caucasian, male, unmarried, no known enemies. Not particularly politically active. Cabal records show his address as being in Jericho. He was unemployed. There is very little information as to why he would have been in Portmeadow, or why anyone would want to kill him.”

  “Do we know anything else about him?” I asked. Cloves shrugged. “Prior to his unemployment, he was a taxi driver,” she said. “Apparently, he was rather raking it in at one point, as he bought the house in Jericho outright. No record of where the savings came from. Prior to that, he was living and working in Headington. He lost his license due to driving under the influence. It would seem he had an alcohol problem.”

  “Taxi driver makes a lot of money, goes on a drinking bender, loses his livelihood and then ends up dead in Portmeadow,” I surmised. “So far nothing jumps out at me.”

  The picture clicked, and the image changed to a crime scene photograph of his body. It looked like gruesome modern art. I have a strong stomach, but I couldn’t help wince slightly.

  “Mr King was found disembowelled in the bushes beside Clarion Heights, two streets from here at approximately 3 AM twelve days ago. Other than the extensive and violent damage to the torso, several internal organs appeared to have been…gnawed on. Multiple deep lacerations to the face, neck and head rendered the corpse almost unrecognisable. His face was mainly shredded or missing. If it was a wild animal, GO or otherwise, it presumably chewed on his head a while. We had to identify him through fingerprints. The right hand was relatively intact. Not much else was, as you’ve seen.”

  I’d seen the photo before, of course. Cloves had been able to get me the crime scene pictures of all three victims, but now they were falling into context, they were somehow more horrible. Real people with names and, previously, lives.

  I was grateful when Cloves clicked the screen to the next photograph. This was a young woman, Asian. I would have guessed mid-twenties, with long straight dark hair and a bright smile. It looked like a college yearbook picture to me.

  “Contestant number two,” she said. “Amanda Bishop, twenty-six, mixed Asian-American. The lovely and late Amanda was a post-grad at Christchurch. Med student, biology. Currently in a tutoring internship mentoring at the college. What we know is that she was a bright student, a level-headed young woman and had been headhunted by Scott Enterprises themselves for work in their medical sector, but she chose to take a year’s further teaching before she made her mind up. She taught a select group, only four or five.” Cloves shrugged. “Looks like she’s not going to take the offer up now. She was the second victim, body found in the underground car park at Meridian Heights.” Cloves looked over at me. “We’ve already made discreet investigations. Nobody living in the complex knew her, or admitted to knowing her. As far as we know, she didn’t move in high society circles anyway. She lived and worked at the college. Like the first victim, she had no reason we know of to be in Portmeadow.”

  “Any connection with the first victim?” I asked, rather unhopefully.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. A high performing Christchurch student with a bright future ahead of her and a hopeless alcoholic jobless taxi driver? I doubt they were an item.” She flicked to the next slide. The crime scene photo of Amanda’s body.

  “She was found practically torn in half.” Cloves cocked her head to one side, studying the screen. “It seems she put up a struggle. After the initial attack, she seems to have been crippled, as there is evidence she dragged herself across the floor and under one of the parked cars. Presumably to evade or hide from her attacker. Obviously she was unsuccessful. They pulled her out of her hiding spot by the legs, almost bisecting her at the waist. There was a tremendous amount of force. As you can see, the mutilation of the body is as savage and thorough as with the first victim. This was three days after the first death. Again, we have no leads. She had no boyfriend or girlfriend that we can identify. Close friends had seen her the day before on campus and didn’t report any strange behaviour.”

  “They know she’s dead?” I asked, surprised. As far as I understood, the murders had been hushed up by Cabal, at least until we knew what the hell we were dealing with. Cloves gave me a weary look. “Don’t be tiresome,” she said. “Officially, she’s a missing person at the moment, same as the first vic. I can handle the police as well as I can handle the press, Harkness. This won’t go public until I decide it should.”

  I didn’t want to look at the gruesome slide on the wall screen any more.

  “And finally?” I prompted.

  The picture changed, a man again, late middle age. He looked rather distinguished, in an absent-minded, dishevelled way that made me think of a professor. He
had a mane of wiry white hair and rather protuberant eyes.

  “Edward Knight,” Cloves said. “Sixty five and retired, previously living a secluded life in Jericho, seems respectable in most ways, although he has in the past voiced opinions on equal rights for GOs. Rather ironic really given that he appears to have been killed by one. He was rather against the Mankind Movement.”

  “What do you mean ‘voiced opinions’?” I asked.

  “Before he retired, he was a columnist for the free presses,” Cloves sneered. As Cabal spin doctor extraordinaire, she disliked the free presses on principle. Cabal has influence on many pressure points, but it still irked her that she couldn’t completely control the flow of information to the public.

  “He was a reporter?” I asked, studying his picture.

  “Nothing particularly radical,” Cloves said. “Arts and culture really. He was based at the Ashmolean Museum. Did a lot of work categorising and collating the archives. He took an interest in GO cultures, such as they are, but he hadn’t published or written anything since he’d retired. No one had a motive to kill him anyway, unless they were deeply opposed to studies into Oxford’s old history.”

  “Or a rabid Mankind Movement supporter,” I said, wanting to remain even-handed.

  “You think a human did this?” Cloves growled, flicking the screen to the photo of his corpse. I hadn’t forgotten that she was an avid Mankind Movement supporter, schmoosing with Marlon Scott himself and his humans-first cronies whenever possible.

  The old man’s corpse on the picture was as gruesomely mangled as the other two victims. He had been found on the towpath by Godstow Lock, in northern Portmeadow, four days ago. At least that was something he had in common with the strange, faceless body currently lying in Blue Lab. He had been found by the river, though admittedly much further upstream. He also appeared to have been savaged by a wild animal of ferocious strength.