Steve sighed, returned to the car and waited. Another ten minutes passed until she slid in the passenger seat. “Sorry about that,” she said, her voice all lightness again, “but I realised I hadn’t checked in with my dad today. It’s his birthday, there’s a meal out but I’m not going to make it.”
“No problem,” Steve said and tore out of the car park onto the main road. Traffic was light, and they made good time to the expressway. He tried not to look at his companion, irritation tightening his chest. Stupid how he let her get to him like this, but it was impossible to ignore the double-standards in the team. If it had been him that delayed a colleague whilst making personal calls, Burnfield would have pulled him aside for a reprimand.
“I never said earlier, but well done for before. You did good work getting hold of the drone records. They haven’t made it any easier to access since their last update have they?”
Steve sighed. “It’s like they’re doing everything possible to make our lives as difficult as possible.”
“Yeah. Give them another ten years and they’ll have replaced us completely.”
Steve slowed down to let another car join from the on ramp and at once switched lanes so he could speed up again. The car behind hooted its horn. Steve flipped him the bird and flashed the car’s police lights. Space opened up between their cars as the driver backed off significantly.
“We’re not going to be any good if you kill us on the way,” Chloe said.
“Too many idiots on the road.”
“Let the auto-pilot drive. That’s what it’s there for.”
“No thanks. I can drive myself just fine.”
After another cloud of silence drifted between them, Steve spoke up. “What do you think of having Jack on the team? Bit weird isn’t it? We were only investigating his wife’s murder last month.”
“It’s ridiculous. I don’t know if Meadows is trying to handicap us on purpose or whether OsMiTech has finally gone into meltdown.”
Chloe had never been fond of having telepaths working within the department. Much as she liked to pretend that Moira’s accident had bothered her, Steve could tell she was just playing the role of mournful colleague. The pair of them had never gotten on especially well. Moira liked to moan about Chloe behind her back, accusing her of treating her like an admin slave.
“He’s a nice enough guy, though,” Steve added. “I don’t know how he does it, to be honest.”
“How he does what?”
“Gets through each day. He’s only just lost his wife and yet here he is investigating even more death and misery.”
“Remnant keepers are a strange bunch. They stick dead people’s eyes in their sockets. That’s got to give you a skewed perspective on life hasn’t it?”
“You think Burnfield was wrong to request a replacement for Moria?”
“We got by fine without teeps on the team. Moira was hardly the most effective cog in the machine. Jack hasn’t got much to live up to. Besides, I don’t think we need to worry about this situation for long. I got the impression from Burnfield that this wasn’t going to be a long-term arrangement. He’ll be back at OsMiTech within the week, shoving more dead eyes into his head, considering himself lucky he gets to spend most of his time doing very little.”
It took them half an hour to get to the Wellington, but as soon as they approached it became clear something was wrong. A scattering of drinkers were on the pavement, a few still with drinks in hand. As Steve parked, he could see the confusion on their faces.
“Stay sharp,” he told Chloe.
They approached the first man outside the pub’s doors. “What’s going on?”
The stranger nodded towards the pub entrance. “In there. Landlord’s just been attacked.”
Chloe ran inside with Steve closely behind. Some drinkers had stayed at their tables but there was little chattering; the place was unnervingly quiet. On the bar’s wooden surface was evidence of trouble. Spilt spirits mixed with broken glasses. There was no one behind the bar and Steve led the way to the door marked 'staff only'. More glass crunched underfoot as they hurried around to the side.
Beyond the staff-only door, a younger man was tending to an older gentleman sitting at the bottom of a staircase. The younger man looked startled at the newcomers. “Pub’s closed. We’re not serving.”
“We’re police,” Chloe responded. “What happened?”
A wave of relief lifted the man’s gloom. “You got here quick.”
“We haven’t come because of a call. We were coming to see Mr Cohen about some security footage.”
“I’m Bill Cohen,” the man on the stairs said, shooing away the younger man. “This is my son-in-law, Roy.”
Steve took in Roy’s shirt and black trousers, “You work here as well?”
Roy nodded.
Chloe knelt and applied a clean tissue to Mr Cohen’s nose. Blood ran from the nostrils, and Steve could now see the reddening on the side of his face. “Who attacked you?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t know. Never seen him before. He came in with a motorcycle helmet and a cricket bat. Smashed up the place a bit before coming around the bar for me. Roy here, managed to scare him off after getting a call to the police.”
“Jesus,” Steve said. “How much did he take?”
“Cleared out the tills. There’s never much in there these days. He’d have been better stealing the beer.”
“Are you OK?” Steve asked Roy.
Roy nodded but his face was still flushed and his eyes looked haunted. “A little shook up.”
“Did you say you called the police?”
“Yes, I thought that’s why you were here.”
“No. I called over network earlier about an ongoing investigation. You had some security footage I'd like to take a look at.”
“It was me you spoke to, Detective,” Mr Cohen said from the steps. He took a clean tissue from the box then nudged Chloe aside and got to his feet. Roy prepared to make a grab for him should he stumble but the old man was clearly tougher than he looked. “You wanted to know about that teep who was in here with that lady.”
Steve nodded.
“They didn’t stay long. He bought her a drink, they chatted for a while, then she left whilst he’d left to go to the gents. I got the impression she was trying to do a bit of business with him if you get my drift.”
“Did you catch any of their conversation?”
“Nothing of significance. The bar was busy and we were both rushed.”
Roy chipped in, “They didn’t seem like they were any trouble. She was smartly dressed. Maybe too dressed up for here, but your teep’s been in many times.”
“Did he ever talk? Tell you about his day?”
Roy shook his head. “He liked to keep himself to himself. We don’t get many telepaths through the doors. Customers get agitated when they do but this one stuck to one corner of the bar and kept himself to himself. Never any bother. What do you want him for anyway?”
Chloe glanced up at Steve before replying. “He was murdered shortly after leaving your pub. We’re tracking his last movements.”
“Seriously? Damn, that’s terrible,” Mr Cohen said. “That’s why you’re after the security footage.”
“That’s right,” Steve replied. “It would be helpful if you had any audio of the victim and this woman.”
Mr Cohen nodded then gestured to Roy. “Can you get it for them? There's a pack of data grips in the access point cupboard. Use one of them.”
“Yeah, sure.” And Roy went back out to the bar leaving the detectives alone with the old man.
Out of his son-in-law’s sight, he slumped back onto the stairs. “I’m too old for this,” he said.
Chloe patted his arm and offered to get him a glass of water but he refused.
“We can run you to the hospital, get you checked out,” Steve suggested.
“I’m fine. He only got in a glancing blow. Lousy shot.”
“Even so.”
&
nbsp; “I just need a sit-down. Maybe I’ll even take the night off.”
Roy returned, a sheepish look on his face. “There’s a problem with that footage. Our thug damaged the access point when he was smashing the place up.”
Steve followed Roy back out to the bar area and led him to an open cupboard under the till. Inside, an access point screen lay broken on top of a fixed input keyboard. Old technology which might have explained why Mr Cohen struggled with the request to send the files remotely.
Steve stared at the mess inside the cupboard. It looked bad. He went back to Mr Cohen and spoke to Chloe. “It’s taken a beating but there’s a chance Phil might be able to get to the footage. Are we OK to take your security access point?”
Mr Cohen waved his hand at the pair of detectives. “It’s no good to me. Take it.”
2:30 PM
A man with a sharp smile and ginger hair met them at the back entrance to the hospital. Burnfield shook his hand. “Thanks for doing this. It’s appreciated.”
The man turned to Jack and offered his hand. “Oswald. Senior pathologist. I believe you’re interested in seeing one of our residents.”
“Yeah, if that’s OK.”
“It’s a worrying case,” he replied, leading the men inside the building. “How’s the investigation going?”
Burnfield threw Jack a look that left him under no doubt that he was to keep his mouth shut. “We’ve a couple of leads we’re following up.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“Other than helping us with the body, no,” Burnfield said.
If Oswald was bothered by the detective’s curt manner, he kept his feelings to himself. But now that the prospect of this was upon him, Jack could feel his heart beating faster. This could all be for nothing. Based on the back of a stupid conversation he’d had with someone on the dark web about the viability of remnants after death. But there was information they were only going to be able to get from Booth himself and as a corpse that was going to prove difficult. Difficult but perhaps not impossible.
Oswald led them into the depths of the hospital, and if the people they passed on their way cared who they were, they didn’t show it. Above their heads, internal micro-drones zipped along the corridors.
“They’re keeping away from us,” Jack mentioned as they trudged down a flight of stairs.
“I haven’t noticed,” Burnfield replied.
At the bottom of the stairs, Oswald opened a door and they stepped into a lower basement corridor. Fewer people along here. The smell of cleaning fluid was strong and caught at the back of Jack’s nose. Robot trolleys pottered about, hauling cages of bed linen. A woman in a nurse’s uniform hurried along with a datapad and a medical case. She smiled as the men passed.
The signs above their heads led them around a couple of bends and shortly they arrived at a pair of double doors. The weight of the words on the silver sign outside the doors was such that they seemed to reach out into the corridor despite their flatness. Morgue.
Oswald pressed his HALO to the access panel and the doors opened and lights flickered on. The air was cool and chilled Jack as he followed the others inside. He held his arms across his chest and resisted the urge to shiver.
“We’re quiet today,” Oswald explained, “I can give you as much time as you need.”
“Thank you,” Burnfield replied.
On the wall facing them, a row of twelve metal fridges. Four along and stacked three high. To their right in the room beyond, were two autopsy tables. In an instant, an image came to Jack’s mind, something that he fought desperately to send away. Even as he was telling himself not to think of his dead wife being cut up on a table like that, perhaps even that very same table, he realised he’d broken the promise to himself. Shamefully now, he realised that he didn’t have a clue what hospital his murdered wife had been taken to after that bastard Leech had butchered her. Maybe he understood what Jack was thinking, for Burnfield walked calmly over to the doors that separated the two spaces and he slid them shut, blocking out the stainless steel deathbeds.
“What you want is in here,” Oswald said, gesturing at the fridge on the left. There were labels on the fridge doors, crystal displays that could be easily changed, and as Jack got closer, he realised they were cycling through the key details of each occupant’s death. Name, age, gender, height. The handle clunked satisfyingly as it was cranked down and Oswald swung the metal door open. A whisper of cold air ghosted out of the cavity and with it the peculiar tang of refrigerated death.
Lights danced across the surface of Burnfield’s eyes and Jack caught a hint of the anticipation in his mind, it smelt like old copper currency. Jack wondered how many times the detective had been forced to do this, come to this room, look at the dead, promise them that he would do all he could to bring their killers to justice. And now, to have his faith in a telepath who wasn’t even sure that what he wanted was even possible.
As Oswald pulled the body on its rack from the fridge, Jack readied himself.
He wasn’t disappointed with the appearance of Booth Maguire. A white paper sheet covered the majority of the man’s body. His pallid feet, displaying tallow skin, extended from the end, hair on the ankles, discoloured toenails, the blotches on his skin. Jack couldn’t pretend this wasn’t the real deal.
Burnfield didn’t wait for Jack to compose himself, perhaps sensing that a delay might give the telepath an opportunity to back out. He lifted the sheet from the body’s face. The lack of eyes was horrific and Jack tasted bile at the back of his throat.
“Are you OK?” Oswald asked. “Do you want some water?”
“No, I’m alright. It’s just—”
“It’s gruesome is what it is. I’ve had plenty of cases where victims have had their eyes destroyed but never once have I seen anyone like this. Do you know how they persuaded him to remove his eyes yet?”
“We’re looking into it. Do you mind giving us a minute?”
Oswald looked taken aback. “I’m not meant to leave the bodies.”
“It would help us a great deal.”
“Even so.”
“If you get into trouble, tell them I threatened you with my new pet telepath.” Burnfield grinned, and patted Oswald on the shoulder. “Come on, Oswald. We’ll be five minutes tops.”
Oswald sighed, but knew that he was beaten. “Five minutes. And you’re not to do anything to the body.”
“Absolutely. We’re just here to look.”
“Right,” Oswald said, walking to the double doors.
Alone, Burnfield looked at Jack. “You going to do this then?”
Jack hesitated. He kept his hands up in front of the man’s face, obscuring the eye sockets with his outstretched hands, hiding the cavities from view. “I don’t know if I can. It probably won’t even work.”
“You told me in your garden that a recall might be possible without an eye. That’s why you wanted to see the body. What’s stopping you?” Burnfield said tetchily.
“It might all be lies. I’ve never done it like this.”
Jack’s hands still hovered over Booth’s face. Gingerly, he reached a finger to touch the man’s dead skin then withdrew it suddenly, like he’d received a shock.
“It will never work like that,” Burnfield said, then he grabbed Jack’s fingers and forced them into the dead man’s sockets. The flesh was firmer than he’d expected.
Jack tried to pull his hands back out but then the impossible happened. A glimmer of a thought. A shape of something. He stretched with his mind, letting the patterns out, free into the recess where minds meet and ideas blur. Where he knew that he could just let go and watch reality snap before him. He concentrated, tried to imagine the path through to the other man’s mind. His training had helped him shape all these experiences into memories of his own. Walking down the path to the trail through the centre of the forest was the best way to start. Safe.
A noise.
Then a pattern.
The man’s memor
ies hit Jack. The force of the sensation was like being thrown forward in a car with no seat belt, and like a man in that situation, Jack tried to find something to hang on to.
The woods. The trail.
He gasped, then felt a grip on his arm. A voice asking him if he was OK. Good. It anchored him. He opened his eyes and looked at the detective.
“It’s incredible. I’m in. The memories are there. Ready for the taking.”
Jack closed his eyes again, keeping his fingers in the sockets. Now he’d established contact, it was easy to find his way back.
What he found surprised even him.
“He’s been well trained. A telepath. At least a class two, possibly a class one. There are so many blocks and patterns that it’s tricky to work around them. I was right about the artwork in his house. It’s to aid his memory manipulation. He’s been conditioned.”
“By adjusters?”
“I don’t know, but there’s more.” Jack probed deeper. Looking for the moments before death. “I’m seeing a lab. He’s working with another man. They’re behind schedule. He’s bothered by something that happened earlier. Someone’s talking to him. He’s not looking.” A pause. “He’s talking on his HALO.” The voice on the call was familiar, but Jack couldn’t place it. “There’s shame. A general unease that he might lose his job or have to see someone to make him better.”
The images twisted, misshaped. Smoke-filled rooms. Then cleared. “Booth’s at the pub. Indira’s sitting right beside him. Now he’s going.” The images were moving faster than he’d have liked. Much faster than in his usual cases. Usually, he had time to sit inside the memories, let them wash over him and soak up the nuances and rhythms of the mind. Get to know the person he was trying to help. “He’s in the alley. There’s someone with him. He’s terrified of rats. He thinks they’ll get at his eyes.”
Burnfield moved beside him. He could sense his closeness. He blinked and saw the detective leaning over the body, hands holding the edge of the fridge shelf, eyes focused on Jack. “And do you see her? Was Indira in the alley with him?”
The Remnant Vault (Tombs Rising Book 2) Page 12
