Keep to your lane, is the clear message. The corollary being: step outside your jurisdiction again, it won’t just be the girl’s head on the mayor’s trophy wall; not that it was her head, thank God.
But what if there’s more to all this than mere territorial pissing? Beneath his living Art Deco ashtrays and colour-plated tomes, Friedler did in fact turn out to be your standard-model thug. In which case, maybe intimidation is his natural go-to, his opening move. But why intimidate at all? And so brutally? It’s a heavy hand to lead with – too heavy for “keep to your lane”. And like a clumsy attempt at misdirection, Percy finds his eye drawn elsewhere, seeking out the thing it shouldn’t see.
But it likely means that Cherri’s digital patch has been compromised. Unless they were already keeping an eye on him. Either way, he must watch his step – and she, hers. Should he warn her? Or perhaps someone has already had a word in her ear. Perhaps, in fact, she was in on it all, a lure for the setup. That might explain how the head had been mocked up so quickly. He had only booked her the night before.
Pointless to speculate. Too many unknowns. Better to follow those leads that he has. But these are far fewer than he’d like; in fact, they are hardly anything at all.
He has a sudden image of Cherri sitting on his bed, toying with the clasp of the suitcase, one foot swinging free, her toes playing with the shoe, teasingly, almost on the point of letting it drop. Is he developing a foot fetish? It’s just a foot, a standard piece of anatomy, like a hand; the feet are, after all, just the hands of the legs. And there’s nothing especially erotic about a hand, is there? So why a foot? Would he have felt the same if it had been a glove she were toying with, pulling at each finger tip, easing it back from the wrist? Hmm, perhaps he would. But stupid. He’s already seen her virtually naked! In both senses. Though it being VR, it might not even be her body, of course, just a digital mock-up, an avatar or a fake. But still he finds himself replaying the memory, moving it forward, watching the shoe – almost-on, almost-off, almost-on, almost-off – waiting, guiltily, shamefully, willing it to drop.
More grist for the therapy mill.
A ping on his interface: the neurochem results are back from the municipal labs. He calls Oldcastle, this time cautioning himself to be more wary in his disclosures.
“The drugs are indeed bespoke,” the pathologist informs him. “No known place of manufacture indicated – no patent ID or other identifying metadata. But no surprise there, if they’re not legit. They do however bear a basic resemblance to drugs traditionally used to treat certain forms of psychosis.”
“Such as what?”
“Mainly, schizophrenia.”
So she was a mental patient? But enquiries at local hospitals, psych wards and private clinics having already turned up negative, then where?
Another dead end. If Friedler doesn’t come through – and there’s every likelihood he won’t – he will have almost nothing to go on. Just the girl’s implant, which he still hasn’t sent off to central labs – and that’s if they can make anything of it.
Aside from her foot, he finds himself dwelling on Cherri’s reaction when first shown the facial reconstruction.
Eye movement and reaction time suggest evasion.
But if she knows something, maybe others do too? So perhaps he should try other working girls? The locals? The clubs and bars?
Yet these would be no more within his jurisdiction than Cherri is. And will she bear the brunt for that? Or will he?
Fuck it. He can’t let fear curb his duties – for himself or anyone else.
Sorry, Cherri with an i.
Alex stares at the platter.
Not a roasted human male head. A pig’s. And not the least bit chauvinistic.
“My dear, are you all right?”
“I … yes, I’m … it’s … is it a little stuffy, in here?”
“Ah, yes. No windows. Sorry. Would you like some fresh air? Is it the pig? I’m so sorry, I presume everyone as blasé about such things as myself. I forget how delicate English stomachs can be.”
“No, it’s … I’m fine. Sorry. I … could I maybe have a glass of water?”
“Of course.”
And almost immediately the servant materialises at her side with an iced carafe.
She doesn’t know what came over her. She’s not normally squeamish, and she’s eaten pig’s head before – at all the high-end eateries she’s been dragged to, has eaten a lot more challenging dishes. It’s just the atmosphere in the room is so … close, and which, mixing with the fraught subtext of their conversation, is evidently playing with Alex’s perceptions.
“Now, where were we? Matriarchy – that was it.”
They chat on – or rather, Alex listens, her attention swimming dreamily in and out as the woman continues to expound her proposals for redressing the gender imbalance.
They’re finishing up with a beetroot sorbet, which, like the dishes before it, also seems to have a hint of that strange umami taste – a recurring theme of the evening, perhaps. Like matriarchy. Ha! Who’s umami!
“But do give it some thought, won’t you?” the woman says.
“Sorry? Give what some thought?”
“What I’ve said. My offer.”
“Offer?”
“To help with the running of it?”
“The foundation? But I thought Herr Rheingold …”
“The foundation, yes. He looks after all that.”
“Then I don’t understand what—”
“My dear, I’m so sorry. I have exhausted you! I see now that my incessant and inane ramblings have quite addled your brain. Some sleep, I think? How is it your Bard puts it? To ‘knit up the ravell’d sleeve of care’? Such a way with words, that man. And such dreamy eyes. But yes, please sleep on it.”
Alex thanks her for the evening and the servant escorts her back to the lift, and it is only as they are ascending that she realises that she has once again left without finding out the woman’s actual name.
The fog persists.
Leaving behind the faux-gastronomy of the square, Percy moves on into the real town, the main night-time artery of which is a relatively short canal called Founders Way. But what it lacks in length (and apostrophes) it makes up for in intensity, criss-crossing above him in a profusion of bridges and walkways, multi-decked on both sides with countless bars and clubs that – judging by the fare calling down as he passes – cater to even the most catholic of tastes.
The visuals are scored by a cacophony of competing soundtracks, layering up like a crazed symphony and conducted only by the ever-evolving variety of human need; the sounds, sights and smells all vying with each other as to which sense can be most vigorously assaulted.
He starts on the lowest level, picking a club at random.
The press of flesh is claustrophobic, the constant stream and counterstream of bodies pushing in and out of its doors bestowing unasked-for intimacies, each look a proposition, a challenge, an entreaty or a threat. He has dressed as casually as his wardrobe will allow in an attempt to blend in (“My God, Percy,” Rachel’s voice, an incongruously dirty laugh, “you dress like an off-duty librarian!”), but there is no “type” to emulate, only numberless variations on some elusive unfamiliar theme – elusive to him, at any rate. The music is loud enough to cure deafness, a beat that reverberates at bone-depth, the lights a stuttering staccato of fractured, stop-motion stills, freezing the club’s clientele in bizarre tableaux. He pushes forward, making for the bar, but is borne aside, caught in a tidal rip of bodies, and finds himself washed up at the foot of one of the stages that rise from the sea of flesh like islets, inches from a face so alien that it might be an escapee from Friedler’s trophy wall. When he does reach the bar, there is no conversation to be had that would not involve yelling, and the space affords no quiet corners or shady nooks in which he might discreetly display the picture of the dead girl.
This is pointless. He makes his way back out, breathless, sweating, relieved, and stands, his head leant back, taking in the cool humid air, staring up into the shrouded night, its silent expanse a grey canvas already primed for neon afterimage and tinnitic whine.
The higher levels look quieter, and he makes his way up onto the walkways, as far above the numbing beats as he can. The higher he climbs, the more select the establishments become, and the more places have door security. He makes to enter one, and is politely but firmly refused by a robotic hand; similar happens at two more places, before he is – by this point, almost to his surprise – granted entrance to a fourth. It is sombrely lit, a more sparsely attended affair that thankfully promises opportunity for something approaching conversation. It has an opium den vibe, a mishmash of far-eastern tropes cultivated less for authenticity than to pander to European orientalism: groups of figures splay on capacious soft-furnishings, draped and entangled, wreathed in languorous wisps of smoke, hookahs and pipes passing between them; diminutive kimono-clad girls pad silently by with diminutive steps, conveying trays of food, drink and other substances to the low tables.
“Your name, sir?”
An exquisite Asian-doll face – but not a physical one; in fact, an intentionally degraded hologram, its texture banded and jerking in nostalgic homage to the heyday of cathode ray. He looks about him again, and what he took for actual kimono-wearing flesh-and-blood girls are the same trickery, holograms cast by little cloaked drones, their fields invisibly conveying the trays of food and drink in the hands of their holographic puppets. Neat, he supposes, in a pointless way.
“I … Do I need a reservation?” he asks it.
“No, sir.” A perfectly degraded analogue smile. “It is only so that we may better serve you.”
“I see. It’s … Antonio.”
“This way, Mr Antonio.”
He follows the semi-opaque woman through into the back, passing more lazy tangles of smoke-wreathed limbs, and is presented at another low table encircled with deep soft couches, already occupied by a company of three. A wide water-filled glass cylinder rises from floor to ceiling, suffused with a soft blue light that casts swirling patterns on the figures seated before it as the two lithe shapes within swirl gracefully up and about.
They are mermaids.
“Ah, Inspector,” says one of the seated company. “What a lovely surprise!”
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi/fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. All instalments are free, but you can support my writing by taking out a paid subscription, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments.