by David Bishop
Inside the cube was a decapitated head, face down. It had been severed above the larynx, the neck neatly sliced through as though it were a joint of cooked meat. The lack of blood indicated the use of a laser blade, cauterising the wound as it cut. Dredd sniffed the air, recognising a familiar odour.
"Roasted flesh," one of the Med-Judges commented. "Probably from the wounds to the forehead. They must have used the tip of the laser to cut into the skin there, leaving that message for you."
Dredd reached into the package and turned the head around to see its face. Lifeless eyes stared up at him accusingly. Two words were visible on the forehead, each letter burnt into the skin: NICE TRY. Dredd slammed the lid of the package shut again, hiding the dead face of Blake Ryan from view.
FIVE
Hershey stared at the image of Ryan's severed head. The Chief Judge had seen death thousands of times, witnessed the moment when life departed a body and left behind just the slowly cooling corpse. She had lost friends and colleagues and she had killed countless perps in the line of duty. None of that made it any easier to face what the Bludd Group had done to the former cadet.
"Alright, I've seen enough," Hershey said wearily. The image on her Tri-D monitor changed as the trophy was taken away, replaced by Dredd's scowling countenance. The treaty negotiations had paused for an early evening meal, giving the Chief Judge an opportunity to return to her office and deal with any urgent matters. The call from Dredd had been first on that list. "This supposed attack on the Grand Hall, it was a ruse to draw the cadet out into the open?"
"I'm not convinced," Dredd replied. "Bludd wants to see the treaty talks fail, like every other crime boss. But forcing Ryan to break his cover by contacting us, that may have been a bonus for Bludd. Or he may have already known the juve was one of our operatives and chose to use him against us."
"Plenty of unanswered questions, Dredd. I need answers."
"The hoverpods almost attacking the exclusion zone, that was a feint. Bludd has something else planned. It may have already happened. He forced us to concentrate our attention on protecting the delegates, leaving other parts of the city vulnerable. We need to identify what Bludd's real target is, or was."
A chiming noise outside her office got Hershey's attention. "The next session is about to begin, I have to go."
"Do you want the exclusion zone maintained?"
The Chief Judge sighed. Another decision, another responsibility she had to bear. "Yes, but scale back the numbers by half. Right now Bludd is five steps ahead of us. We need to catch up fast before he makes his next move. Hershey out." She deactivated the Tri-D screen and sagged back in her chair. Her desk was strewn with unanswered memos and requests, all of which would have to wait. The chimes to call delegates back to the treaty talks resumed outside. The Chief Judge sighed and got to her feet, aware she hadn't eaten all day. That would have to wait as well.
Max Normal hurried in through the back entrance of Dennis Price Block, checking over his shoulder that nobody was following him. The pinstripe freak had been keeping a low profile since his close encounter with the enraged Bonjo. Word on the street claimed the Rexellian wanted to get his hands - all four of them - on the human hustler and administer an almighty beating. Max imagined the alien's diminutive manager Mr Rogan would probably provide a live translation of Bonjo's threats and gloating as the blows rained down. Max had suffered a few thrashings in his life and had no wish to endure another.
The pinstripe freak stepped into the turbolift and requested a floor above the level where his con-apt was located. Two decades as an informant for Dredd had taught Max plenty about how to avoid unnecessary physical pain. Anyone who was important in the Big Meg's criminal underworld knew Max had been a star informant for the Justice Department. Normal had always feared what would happen if word of his association with Dredd leaked out. In fact, it proved to be his salvation. Max acquired an invisible halo of protection. Few would touch a hair on his head for fear of invoking Dredd's wrath.
Better still, Normal became a conduit between the underworld and the Judges. Should perps want to give themselves up, contacting Max was a simple solution. Decide you'd had enough of your law-breaking lover? A subtle tip-off to Normal and the unwanted person got a spell in the iso-cubes. The traffic was two-way as the Judges used Max to feed information to the underworld.
Sometimes, the quickest way to catch a perp was to set other perps against them. If word spread of a dunk poaching on another pickpocket's territory, retribution could be swift and painful. Most crime bosses had a dislike of perps who favoured any form of child abuse. The Judges could send a message via Max about a particularly horrific case. Within a day the culprit would appear at the nearest Sector House, usually the worse for wear.
Normal retired permanently after an assassin from outside the Big Meg used the former informant as bait to lure Dredd into a trap. Max had almost died from his injuries. After recovering he swore off doing favours for perps or the Judges. Every now and then he relented for a one-off message or urgent case, but otherwise kept himself to himself. The seedy world of shuggy halls was Max's only vice now. He hustled a few credits to keep himself in the style to which he had become accustomed. Bespoke pinstripe suits were not cheap and having your bowler reblocked was fiendishly expensive.
The turbolift arrived at floor twenty-eight. Max popped his head out and glanced in either direction, but nobody was waiting for him. Feeling slightly foolish, he stepped out and hurried to the nearby emergency stairs. After walking down a level he emerged cautiously on the twenty-seventh floor. Still no sign of trouble. Normal strode briskly to the door of his con-apt and unlocked it. After a final glance to either side, he slipped into the unlit room and shut the door, quickly locking it behind himself. "Lights!" he called to the voice-activated environmental control system. Nothing happened. "I said hit the lights, daddio!" Still nothing.
"Illuminate," a deep, powerful voice growled from the darkness. Gradually the con-apt's living room began filling with light. For a moment Max wondered if he had wandered into the wrong apartment, but then he realised that he wouldn't have been able to unlock the door. Comprehension slowly dawned on him when he saw three men positioned around the room. To the left was a ginger dwarf, sour-faced and pointing a powerful handgun at Max. On the right stood a pasty-faced male, lightly tossing an activated laser blade back and forth between his hands. But the most imposing figure was sat in an armchair, arms folded across his chest, one hand thoughtfully stroking his chin. When he spoke, Max recognised it as the voice that had activated the lights.
"My apologies for overriding the voice-activation codes for your con-apt, Mr Normal. It was a necessary procedure to prevent any alarm systems being triggered when we gained access to your dwelling. Rest assured, the damage will be undone when we depart."
"Whatever you say, my man," Max replied as jauntily as he could. "You're the big bad, I'm just the man dressed in trad."
"Quite." The heavyset visitor stood and approached Normal, raising a fleshy hand in a gesture of friendship. "Allow me to make the introductions. The scowling individual to your left is Angry Sanderson, while the other gentleman is known only as Fincher. I don't know if you've heard of me. My name is-"
"Jesus Bludd?" Max replied.
The visitor smiled broadly. "Exactly. I've come to ask you a favour."
"What do you mean it's impossible? You have the most sophisticated surveillance analysis systems on the planet and you can't track six people leaving an underpass in a single vehicle?" Dredd was giving the Public Surveillance Unit the rough edge of his tongue, frustration and anger evident in his voice. "PSU gets more than its fair share of funding from the department. I suggest you put it to better use!"
The unfortunate analyst on the receiving end of this tirade pulled out her earpiece and threw it down on the terminal. Judge Rebecca Sharp was about to let loose a torrent of abuse when she recognised the stern-faced figure walking towards her. Tall, black and forbidding, Nile
s ran the PSU with clinical detachment. His predecessor had turned the division into a personal arsenal against other senior Judges, using the PSU to gather information about potential rivals. But Jura Edgar had gone too far in playing puppet-master from behind the scenes and was pushed sideways to run a detention camp out in the Cursed Earth, out of sight and out of mind.
Niles stopped in front of the terminal and picked up the abandoned earpiece. "Is this Dredd?" he asked Sharp, who nodded. Niles pushed the comms device into his own ear. "Dredd, this is Niles. I understand you're less than happy with PSU's efforts to locate your suspects."
Sharp watched her superior as he listened to a stream of invective. Around the operations room of PSU, other analysts were quietly switching over to the same channel, not wanting to miss out on the confrontation. After half a minute of harsh words Niles interrupted the veteran street Judge.
"I've heard enough, Dredd. My people are doing everything they can to help you solve the murder of Cadet Ryan. I don't need to remind you this isn't the only case being worked on here and shouting at my analysts does nothing for morale or productivity. If you've got a problem with how I run my division, you take it up with me. Don't take it out on my Judges! Do I make myself clear?"
A long silence followed. Sharp realised she was holding her breath and let the air slip out through her nostrils. Dredd mumbled a reply to Niles, who gave Sharp a wink and smiled.
"That's perfectly understandable, Dredd. Everyone in the department wants these killers found and punished. As soon as we have something, PSU will communicate it directly to you. Niles out." He removed the earpiece and returned it to Sharp. "I don't think you'll have any more trouble from Dredd today."
"Th-thank you, sir," Sharp stammered. "Thank you very much."
Niles looked around the operations room. Everyone was watching to see what he would do next. "Nobody said you could take a break! We've got perps to catch so get to it!" The other analysts hurriedly reactivated their terminals and resumed working. Niles nodded at Sharp before returning to his office.
She pushed her earpiece back into position and began scrutinising the readouts on her terminal. "PSU to Dredd, I've got some new information for you. Only nineteen vehicles capable of carrying six people emerged from the underpass during the half hour immediately after the second hoverpod went in. None of those are registered to the Bludd Group or Red Inc, but one was reported stolen this morning. I'm uploading the details to your onboard computer now."
Dredd began following the route taken by the suspect vehicle after it left Ed Wood Underpass. The stolen transport was a mo-pad, hijacked soon after dawn from a family driving across Southside Sector 41. Mega-City One had a permanent housing shortage, thanks to its burgeoning population and tendency to suffer apocalyptic disasters every few years. Such incidents frequently resulted in tens of millions losing their homes as entire city blocks were wiped out by the latest calamity to befall the Big Meg. Taking up residence in a Displaced Persons Camp was never an enticing prospect, so those who could afford to would buy a mo-pad instead. PSU estimates suggested nearly twenty million people currently resided in such vehicles.
Frequently luxurious, mo-pads were required to remain permanently on the road. Any vehicle that stayed in one place for more than a day - barring catastrophic gridlock or act of grud - lost its mobile home classification and became liable to crippling property taxes. So mo-pads were always moving, driving around the thousand million miles of skedways snaking through the city. Mobile refuelling trucks avoided the need to stop while cruise control and auto-pilot facilities meant the owner did not spend their entire life behind the wheel. Nevertheless, living in a mo-pad required a peculiar kind of citizen; one who was able to cope with a life always on the move.
Dredd tracked the mo-pad's movements for more than an hour before locating the vehicle in the Sector 87 dust zone. These abandoned industrial areas were favourite haunts for fugitives and perps, the residual radioactivity and presence of bubbling chem-pits disrupting PSU camera coverage. Dredd eventually found the mo-pad in a dead end. The vehicle had been burnt out with another phosphor grenade, destroying all trace of evidence. Scorch marks on the ground nearby suggested the occupants had switched to another pair of hoverpods. Dredd muttered to himself as he crouched to examine the scorch marks. "Five steps ahead of us... Hershey was right." His thoughts were interrupted by a message from Control.
"Dredd responding, what is it?"
"There's been a raid at the Dustbuster. A display has been stolen from the Cold War section. Judges on the scene are asking for you to attend."
"Tell them I've got greater concerns than some opportunist thief stealing a collection of one hundred and fifty year-old digital watches!"
"The helmet in charge is quite insistent, Dredd. Judge Langenkamp believes it may be related to the case you're investigating."
"Mind telling me how?"
"The robbers left something behind at the scene; a headless corpse. Initial analysis suggests it's the body of-"
"Blake Ryan," Dredd said, already running for his Lawmaster. "Tell Langenkamp I'm on my way!"
Judge Bruce was sick and tired. He had managed just three hours of sleep after his late night drinking binge with Smirnoff from East-Meg Two - by crikey, that bloke could drink - and a long afternoon of meaningful discussions about formulating an extradition treaty was not Bruce's idea of a good time. Mega-City One's Chief Judge might be a looker but her conversation was all business, business, and more bloody business. The Oz delegate wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. Thankfully, Hershey had called a halt to the opening day's session and told all the visitors they could return to their quarters.
Bruce was pausing in his private room to collect some papers when he noticed a light blinking on his comms unit. He had spoken with the Chief Judge of Oz during an earlier break and was not due to report back in until the next morning. Who else could have accessed the secure line? Bruce considered summoning Giant from the corridor outside. The young Judge didn't seem to have a daystick up his arse like Dredd and the other yanks, so maybe he'd be able to help. But curiosity got the better of Bruce and he activated the comms unit. A single line of text appeared on screen: INCOMING MESSAGE, AUDIO ONLY - DO YOU ACCEPT?
"Suppose so," Bruce said, shrugging his shoulders. The unit crackled with a burst of static, then a deep voice resonated from the speakers.
"Judge Bruce, I have information that may be of interest to you - and a warning. Once you have returned to your private quarters, I strongly suggest you watch the Mega-City News on Tri-D. You will see something quite remarkable later this evening, something you will wish to communicate to your superiors in Oz. Now, I must give you a warning about events to come..."
Doctor Swanson had never been the most confident of women in matters of the heart. Ask her to give a paper about the historical era in which she specialised, the 1980s, and she was utterly at ease. Her mastery of that decade was second to none, her understanding of its curiosities and quirks unrivalled among scholars around the world. On her favourite topic Swanson could converse with Chief Judges and Tri-D celebrities without nerves or fear. But ask her to articulate the romantic feelings locked within her heart, to speak aloud the private fantasies that sent a shudder of delight through her body... then she reverted to plain Janet, a shy girl hiding behind her glasses and textbooks, terrified someone could get close enough to touch her or to show her any affection. That changed the day the museum curator first met her lover.
The Swanson family had always been academics. Janet's parents were professors at Mega-U, teaching Classics and Social History. Both had been eminent figures in their respective fields. How they had ever found time to conceive a child was a mystery to Janet, such was her parents' devotion to history. Growing up surrounded by dusty books and relics in the family con-apt at Kazuo Ishiguro Block had been a lonely and demeaning experience. No affection was ever shown, no warmth, no kinship. On the rare occasions her family ate a meal tog
ether, all discussions were conducted in the arid wasteland of academic terminology and debate.
In such a loveless environment, Janet had instinctively grasped at the one area where she might form a bond with her parents. She devoted herself to studying, becoming the youngest graduate ever from Mega-U and earning her own professorial chair by the age of twenty. But this remarkable achievement went unnoticed and uncelebrated. All her life had been given over to trying to win her parents' love and affection, all in vain. Instead they had accepted her as a fellow academic, a new addition to the ranks of petrified people whose only excitement came from living in the past.
Janet had rebelled and abandoned her professorship to become curator of the Dustbuster when it opened. After that her parents refused to even acknowledge her. She had moved outside the tiny orbit of their lives and thus ceased to exist, except as another physical presence in the family con-apt.
Dr Swanson did not believe in fate, but she sometimes wondered if chance was truly random. The invitation to give a lecture series in Brit-Cit on that nation's legacy from the 1980s had come out of the blue, but it was a welcome opportunity to get away from the dry hopelessness of her life in the Big Meg. The chances of a toxic waste hover-tanker crashing into Kazuo Ishiguro and only killing two people were miniscule. That those two people should be her parents... Maybe fate was real and it had smiled down on her. She had been due back home the previous night but missed her flight. Another coincidence, another piece of happenstance.
After the freakish death of her parents, Dr Swanson had blossomed. She still wore her usual tweed suits and forbidding glasses, but gradually began learning how to enjoy life. Rather than shut herself away at the end of the working day like one of the exhibits, Janet started joining her staff for an occasional meal, even sampling shampagne for the first time. A life that for so long had appeared empty and futile was starting to come alive.
