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Illustration by John Allemand
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Wherein Jaggers and Shad rise to new heights…
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Cold and windy, dreary and damp,” muttered Detective Superintendent Marvin Matheson. “No wonder Guy Fawkes chose November in which to kill King James and blow up bloody Parliament.”
It was a day after that particular celebration, but superintendent was still celebrating apparently. No knock-knock jokes, which meant he was really down the pipe this time. Matheson was standing behind his desk, his hands clasped behind his back, head hung forward, eyes looking up through a frown and his office window at the gloom of the latest weather front. Superintendent’s early-model police replacement meat suit strongly resembled a historical American gangster named John Dillinger. I for one never wished to see John Dillinger depressed. Media ridicule of that model meat suit, in combination with his wife’s insistence he keep it, lost Matheson his position as Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester. He was eventually deposited in Artificial Beings Crimes Division of Interpol as a lowly detective superintendent running ABCD’s Devon office in Exeter. Never quite let go of that.
“You wanted to see me, superintendent?” I said brightly.
He slowly turned his face toward me. “Jaggers.”
“Yes sir.”
He turned and looked down at his desk. Twice he tapped on a few papers with the tip of a stylus. “It has been pointed out to me, Inspector Jaggers, you and Shad deserve a day off, principally in recognition of your work on the Hound Tor and Hangingstone Rat inquiries. That recommendation, incidentally, came directly from Middlemoor.” He smiled sadly. “I heartily concur.”
That took me back a step. It was uncommon at best to have any mention at all of ABCD issue from the rarified climes of the chief constable’s office. Well known to us all, ever since a particular award ceremony, Raymond Crowe, chief constable of the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary, had been rather frosty on the subject of artificial beings, particularly on amdroids in law enforcement. Perhaps we were coming up in the world. “Good news, sir.”
Matheson almost maintained his sad smile. “Nice spot of media buzz on both cases, Jaggers. Shad and you have the rest of the day and this evening off. Pass on the word to Detective Sergeant Shad, if you would be so kind.”
“Thank you, sir, I will. Doesn’t that leave the office a bit shorthanded? Towson called in sick.”
“Stay on call, but Parker should be able to handle anything that comes up.” He gave himself a moment of silence thinking upon Detective Constable Ralph Parker, incontinent flea-infested gorilla. His sad gaze elevated until it rested upon me. “So, Jaggers, how is Shad settling into his replacement duck suit?”
“Well enough, sir.”
“A bit embarrassing him renting that Watson meat suit from Celebrity Look-alikes after his duck caught it at Hangingstone.”
“That was a Nigel Bruce suit, sir, made up to look like Dr. Watson.”
Matheson shook his head and looked again at the gloomy sky. “Damned silly. You looking like Basil Rathbone and Shad doing his Watson—damned silly. The chief constable put a bug in my shell-like when he heard about it, I can tell you.”
“Remarkable amount of cooperation we received from the public, though, sir, as Holmes and Watson. C.C. Crowe, in addition, appears to have forgiven us with this suggestion of a day off.”
Matheson looked confused for a moment then sloughed it off. “True. Mercurial man, the chief constable.” He turned and faced me. “I find it hard to tell with a duck, Jaggers, but at times Shad seems a bit depressed. Still recovering from the Hangingstone thing?”
“I don’t believe it’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sir. As you know better than anyone else, no one ends in ABCD by choice. Being a star on the telly must have been very exciting for him.”
“He didn’t find getting blown to pieces exciting?”
“I hardly think he’d list that as a job perk.”
“I suppose not.” He shook his head. “Those adverts Shad was in: You suppose there’s anything to that insurance?” He waved a hand at me to fend off my uninformed answer to his idle question. “All rubbish now they’ve gone to that slimy little yob of a lizard for a mascot, isn’t it? In any event, a night off will do Shad and you both some good. AB Emancipation Week, you know. I may take the missus out tonight myself.” He sat down, opened a file, and said without looking up, “Try and enjoy yourself, Jaggers. Hate to waste a perfectly good gesture.”
It was going to be a good night out. I called Val with the news and she suggested a double date with Shad and Nadine. Val was a golden Tonkinese bio and her orange tabby bio friend had been steady dating Shad. I put it to my partner and Shad decided to shake off his mood and agreed to go with us to a showing of The Adventures of Robin Hood at Exeter’s Picture House. Part of the film’s appeal to the AB culture was because a generic bio used to replace fallen police males in Britain some decades ago bore a striking resemblance to twentieth century actor Basil Rathbone. Besides Sherlock Holmes, Rathbone also played Sir Guy Gisbourne, Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1938 Robin Hood classic. What amused me about the film, aside from being a detective and wearing one of those Sheriff of Nottingham meat suits myself, was the strong resemblance of Dr. Hitchins, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, to the actor Eugene Pallette who played Friar Tuck. The archbishop was a very outspoken—dare I say rabid—opponent not only of AB rights but of AB existence, which is why Eugene Pallette always drew some good natured booing from the ABs in the audience every time he appeared on screen.
Shad and his date shared a seat. Val, of course, watched from my lap while I scratched her ears. I had disabled my wireless interface, the theater was darkening, and the new stadium seating was packed with just about every kind of artificial being in town, bio and mech, amdroid and android, as well as the occasional human natural. The flick had barely begun when Shad’s head went back, shook, and faced me, his bill dropping open. I sighed glumly, knowing either it was a call from Heavitree Tower or Shad was suffering a massive stroke. Either way the evening’s entertainment was concluded.
“It’s Parker,” Shad quacked.
“Told you to disable your wireless.”
“Exeter cops have a dead bio, Jaggs. Parker says it’s on Parliament Street and he can’t fit. What’s he mean he can’t fit?”
“It means he’s too big to fit in the street,” I answered curtly as evil Prince John and the sheriff conversed up on the screen. “Call in the cruiser and run up the mechs.” I bent over and said to Val, “I’m terribly sorry, dear, but we have a call.”
“Harry,” Val purred, “Nadine and I can make it home on our own. You two go and take your call.”
“We’ll be fine,” Nadine mewed to Shad. “Take care.”
I stood and put Val down on the seat as Shad hopped off their seat and followed me out into the aisle at a brisk waddle.
Outside the sky was dark, the wind coming up from the Exe dank and chilly. Tarp fields protecting the unfinished new apartment construction across Bartholomew from the theater cast the street in a powder blue glow. I turned up my collar against the chill, but only a bit to conserve the charge.
“Cruiser’s on the way, Jaggs. Parker says he’s running his command post out of Broadgate.”
“Shad, do you still have that can of flea spray we picked up from the chemist’s last time we worked with Parker? I can’t afford to bring an infestation home with me again. Val is terribly sensitive.”
“That can’s gone,” said the duck with a smirk, which is not easily done with a bill. “I mixed the flea spray in the can with deodorant, had the mix put in a cut glass atomizer I got at Boots, gift wrapped it, and gave it to Parker during that fireworks show yesterday.”
I frowned. “Guy Fawkes Day.”
“Whatever. I told Parker it was cologne. Eau Le Monk, all the rage among the simian set, and Merry Fawkesmas. He was quite moved.”
“Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament, Shad. We don’t usually give presents on Guy Fawkes Day.”
“I imagine that depends on your opinion of Parliament. Parker is, however, using the spray.”
“You are a devious duck.”
“Thanks. Now, if we can only get Parker to make it to a loo before he takes a dump, there will be peace in our time.” He looked up in the direction of the Pennsylvania—St. Thomas Corridor, the traffic in the air vector sparse at this time of night. “Here’s our ride.”
The cruiser, an issue gray and electric-green Sky Rover Metropolitan, descended in front of us, its green strobe array flashing, its doors rotating up as the wheels touched down on Bartholomew. Shad flew into the driver side and I entered the passenger side, checking the mechs in back on my way in. They were mechanical vehicles of various sizes and configurations into which we could copy our engrams while our bodies were held in stasis. The mechs were able to go places and do things the duck and I couldn’t. Parker could’ve used a mech to work his crime scene, but he numbered copying among his many phobias and there was simply no point in arguing with him about it. Green readouts on the bed panels showed mechs operational, charged, internal laboratories stocked and ready, our engrams as of this morning copied into the Heavitree mainframe.
The doors closed and as the cruiser ascended toward the corridor, Shad said, “Do you Brits have a weird spelling for parliament?”
“Why?”
“I entered it twice, but this heap’s GPS doesn’t have a listing in Exeter for any Parliament Street.”
I looked at the GPS readout. “You spelled it correctly. Parliament isn’t on the cruiser response GPS. Put the cruiser down on High Street in front of the Guildhall.”
“A secret street and Parker can’t fit in it?”
“No secret, but neither Parker nor a cruiser can fit. You’ll see why.”
He waited a moment for a further explanation. When none came, he said, “Be mysterious.”
Grumpily, Shad guided the cruiser through the Cathedral Vector Roundabout. No sooner were we through it, than the cruiser dropped from the corridor and headed toward the illuminated columned gingerbread of the medieval Exeter Guildhall immediately below us, still the oldest working municipal building in Britain. High Street, though, was choked with bright lights, news vehicles, and a crowd. The media were in force.
“Is the king visiting?” asked Shad.
“Not to my knowledge.” I looked around. “Change of plan,” I said seeing a place nearby where we could put down unobserved. “Behind the Guildhall, Market Square in the shopping center. Put us down just beyond that small church.” I reached forward and flicked off the switch for the light array. The entire block of buildings, of which the Guildhall was only one, was a warren of little streets, shops, and walks which had been turned entirely over to foot traffic and enterprise. The lot of it was called the Guildhall Shopping Centre. At this time of night, the shops were closed and the walkways mostly deserted.
Shad changed course slightly and nodded toward the square and the tiny, ancient church constructed from local red stone. “Isn’t that church St. Pancreas?”
“St. Pancras, not pancreas.” I saw the duck laughing silently. “As you well know,” I added, dreading my partner’s delight once he found out the block opposite the High Street end of Parliament Street had another old church called St. Petrocks.
After Shad settled the cruiser down next to the small Rougemont stone church, I had us both copy into micros. The micro is a matte black cylinder-shaped air mech roughly the size of a lipstick, one end of which bristles with a variety of forensic instruments. With them I hoped Shad and I could get to the scene without drawing attention.
Once copied, our usual meat suits in stasis, we flew from the vehicle and Shad put the cruiser up in hover park. At an altitude of approximately two meters, we flew around the west end of the tiny church into a shop-lined walkway that led to the north end of Trickhay Street walk. We streaked south between the furniture stores, gadget emporiums, wireless shops, restaurants, tea shops, and AB boutiques passing only a lone bipedal dustmech with attached dustbin. He was attempting to scrape what appeared to be a flattened wad of chewing gum from the pavement.
“Bloody AB Emancipation Week, me tin arse,” the dustmech muttered. “Doin’ the same bloody thing and payin’ bloody taxes for the privilege is all it is. Bloody wankers in bloody Parliament, tossers the lot—”
We turned right when we came to Waterbeer Street walk, leaving the unhappy mech and his soliloquy on unrequited expectation behind. After only a few meters we came to a police constable standing by himself in the dark, his hands clasped behind his back, his stocky form fairly filling the hundred centimeter-wide entrance of a long narrow walk between two buildings. Partly obscured by his shoulder on the right-hand wall of the walkway was a regulation size traffic sign that read: Parliament St.
“I can see why Parker can’t work the scene,” transmitted Shad out of the cop’s hearing. “He’d need a shoehorn to get in there.”
“It’s even narrower at the High Street end,” I responded. “Imagine Parker dropping a load as he tried to wriggle his way into the crime scene in front of all those cameras. That would’ve been a proper cock-up. Turn on your lights, Shad, go on external audio, and let’s log in with the constable.”
We were both hovering in the dark in front of the fellow’s face. When we turned on our lights I’m afraid we startled the poor chap. He jumped, bellowed, screamed, and swung his arms about.
“Detective Inspector Harrington Jaggers and Detective Sergeant Guy Shad, Devon ABCD,” I quickly introduced us.
The constable froze for an instant, let out a breath, then bent over to pick up his helmet, muttering about bloody pips, the noun modified by an additional Middle English adjective or two. Some words simply never go out of fashion.
“Police Constable Styles,” he introduced himself as he stood, a rather peeved expression on his face. Styles was a big ruddy-looking chap in his late twenties, sandy-haired and attempting rather fruitlessly to raise a moustache. After brushing off his helmet, he replaced it upon his head, smoothed his yellow anorak, adopted a stiff military posture, and said, “Now then. You’re the Interpollys.”
“Detectives Artificial Beings Crimes Division of Interpol, Devon Office, actually,” Shad said using his Laurence Olivier playing Marcus Licinius Crassus voice. Quite intimidating, even coming from an illuminated flying lipstick.
“No offense there, detective,” said the officer stiffly. “But you two bits pop out the dark all sudden like a couple eyeballs from bleedin’ Hell. Not half taken aback I was.”
“Our apologies, Styles,” I said. “We were trying to avoid the media tumult at the High Street end. Do we log in with you?”
“Sergeant Dunn, sir.” He gestured with his head toward the walkway he was guarding. “Sergeant’s at the other end. He sort of expected you to report there.”
“Indeed. Are you chaps responsible for all the media attention? On High Street it looks like the resurrection and marriage of Princess Di and Elvis.”
The corners of Styles’s mouth turned down as he shook his head. “Don’t understand it. Naught there but a dead bird.”
“It was reported to us that the deceased is a bio,” I said.
He shook his head and turned down the corners of his mouth. “Can’t prove it by me, inspector. Looks like any other old sky rat to me.” He grinned. “No shortage of pigeons in Exeter, is there,” he said with an attempt at jocularity that faded rather rapidly as neither of the pips hovering before him reacted. The corners of his mouth resumed their downward turn.
“If the victim is a bio,” said Shad, still as Marcus Licinius Crassus, “it probably carries a human imprint, Styles. It may be a murder victim.”
The police constable shrugged his wide shoulders, his face devoid of expression. “Not paid to worry about bios,” he said. “Your job, now, isn’t it? No offense, detective, but the bloke couldn’t of thought much of hisself getting copied into a pigeon suit. Might as well’ve copied into a toad or a flippin’ dung beetle, right? Besides, amdroids all got bodies tucked away in stasis somewheres, don’t they?”
“Some do,” began Shad coolly.
“Thank you, Police Constable Styles.” Outside of Styles’s hearing, I transmitted to Shad, “Stop turning your crank and follow me.”
“The bozo,” Shad muttered as we swooped into the dark narrow passage, the walls on either side made of poured composite glass, smooth but tinted to look like brick. The only illumination came from the lights on High Street.
As we reached midway in the walk, my light picked up a small still figure on the left near the northeast wall. We descended until we were next to it. The corpse was indeed a pigeon. The bird was lying on its right side on the cracked gray paving, his head toward High Street, his dark pink toes curled up, landing gear retracted in death. The bird’s feathers were disheveled particularly on the side against the pavement. There were a few spatter marks near the corpse that could have been blood. “Shad.”
“Yeah?”
“Be a good fellow and notify Sergeant Dunn of our presence. Ask him to make available whoever it was who reported finding this body over at DC Parker’s command post. Also, explain we’re shorthanded and ask Dunn to keep his men on duty until we clear the scene.”
“You got it.”
As Shad streaked toward High Street, I played my lights down the length of the bird, measured its dimensions and calculated its weight. It was a common Rock Dove model, bluish-gray wings, no wing bands but white coloring along the wings’ leading edges. It had a partial white ring around its neck, open in the front, and its breast was a warmer hue than the rest. The bird’s head coloring was darker, but not iridescent toward the neck as you see with so many pigeons. As the general run of pigeons go, this one was neither handsome nor unique. It was almost as though this model had been chosen for its dullness—its ability to blend into a background.
I checked my instruments and I picked up the fading marker beacon of a bio receiver. This was how one bio could always identify another as a bio, which meant the one who discovered the body was likely an amdroid or human bio. I opened the mech’s neural reader and checked the pigeon’s imprint and recall bank. Both neutral. Unless the occupant had been on continuous sync with a neural net or a body in stasis, the memory information was lost to wherever such energies go after life can no longer sustain them.
“We’re logged in, Jaggs,” transmitted Shad as he returned. “I don’t get it. That Dunn seemed really irritated we didn’t come in from High Street. There’re two mechs out there from the Forensic Medical Examiner. Dunn says he’ll send them in to haul off the vic once we’re done. There was a newshound out there who says you know him.”
“Fidelis?” I asked.
“That’s the one. Sniffs out tips for BBC 228? I know him from Rougemont Gardens.”
“I’ve thrown him a bone on occasion. What does Fido have to say about the news frenzy out on High Street?”
“He was told to be there and to be heavy with camera. Worthwhile story alert.”
“Any idea what the story concerned?”
“I got the definite feeling everyone out there is expecting to catch someone official with his pants down.”
“Really.” I thought on that for a second then shrugged. “Shad, scan the vic, get a liver temp, DNA, and ID while I set up a prang and fly the grid. Analyze this spatter here, as well.”
While Shad got to work, I pulled away and up until I hovered approximately ten meters away from the corpse toward the shopping center end of the walk. Because of the narrowness of Parliament Street I couldn’t both get a good view and a solid fixed wall position upon which to mount the Vader prang—cop slang for the high definition image marker used for recording and analyzing the content of crime scenes. I attached one end of a high-tension poly web to one building wall about four meters up, stretched the web across the street, and attached it to the opposite wall. Mounting the prang in the center of the web, I remotely activated it. Once it settled down it began making a three-dimensional wideband record of the scene and I began a grid search of the entire space between the walls.
The walkway was unobstructed relatively clean concrete, it’s condition making it more than fifty years old. Save for the images of a couple of false doors imbedded in the glass below and images of a couple of false windows and exhaust ports four stories above, the building walls were simply two solid featureless slabs of poured glass: Modern, secure, low maintenance. When I got to the High Street end I looked out at the crowd. Although the curiosity seekers had thinned somewhat, the media reporters were just as thick as before and not moving. Nothing to see at that end; no one issuing statements. The tip they had gotten must have been made of solid gold—or that’s the way they were regarding it. I returned to the grid.
I noticed a small whitish feather stuck on the southwest wall approximately three meters up from the corpse. I closed on the site and hovered across from it. UV light showed a variety of organic materials—bird waste, skin cells, and a small amount of medium-velocity blood spatter—surrounding the feather in a vertically elongated impact pattern. In normal light there were a few microscopic red fibers scattered through the lower right portion of the pattern. I took images of the site, retrieved samples of the fiber evidence, took DNAs from the skin cells, feather, and blood, then measured the impact pattern to compare with the corpse’s particulars to calculate impact angle, force, and trajectory.
“Jaggs,” said Shad, “The spatter on the walk is medium-velocity blood matching the vic’s. Pattern is the result of ground impact on already present surface blood. The vic’s wound is on the side against the ground. Scan shows several broken bones on the bird’s right side: Two in the right wing, five ribs on the right side of the breast. Wing and rib bones broke the skin. Dead about four hours.”
“Around five this evening, then.” I transmitted my data. “Does this match your DNA?”
A pause. “It’s a match,” answered Shad. “What do you have?”
“Blood, a feather, and some additional material. It appears that the deceased was propelled against the southwest wall from below—perhaps someone throwing the body up against the wall. It bounced, the trajectory arced up and the body landed next to the opposite wall. Evidence would indicate that the vic was already dead.”
“Kids playing handball with a dead bird?”
“Only one wall impact. Do you have the area surveillance camera locations yet?”
“Working.”
“ID?”
“No name yet, Jaggs, but Bio Registry says this is one of a super flock of eight thousand basically identical pigeons purchased from London Industrial Biotronics four years ago by a private security firm headquartered in Slough called Pureledge, Ltd.”
I descended toward Shad and the corpse. “Are you telling me that bird is a private dick?”
“Rent-a-cop. Pureledge hires out to keep real pigeons off of buildings, monuments, and out of the ground transit stations. Remember the old movie, To Catch a Thief?”
“Certainly. Hitchcock film. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.” I fought manfully for the date, but had to relent. “Released in the 1960s, yes?”
“Fifty-five,” corrected Shad. We were both old film buffs, but Shad’s knowledge of films was encyclopedic, as befits a dedicated thespian.
“Set a pigeon to catch a pigeon.”
“I’m going through Pureledge’s site right now. Pureledge has an office here in Exeter on Castle Street. It runs three wings of three hundred and twenty birds per wing—” Shad paused for a moment. “Ledge marshals is what they’re called.”
“Shad, did you get any fiber trace off the body?”
“Red fiber. Only one thread visible, the rest microscopic. All of the fibers are centered on the same impact point that broke all these bones. You have red fiber up there?”
“All microscopic. The impact pattern on the wall shows the bulk of the fiber trace considerably off center, though. Between that and the blood spatter, when the bird hit this wall his bones had already been broken and had already been bleeding. What’s your guess on the fibers?”
“It was wrapped around whatever killed this bird.”
“Shad, do these ledge marshals maintain continuous sync while on duty?”
“Their site doesn’t say and no one right now is answering the phone. Jaggs, did you know this was how they were keeping pigeons from nesting on building ledges?”
“I noticed a dozen years ago or so in London when they took down the pigeon netting from several of the buildings there. I never thought to question why. Pigeons still seemed the same. Fewer of them, perhaps. Buildings and walks were remarkably cleaner. Get in touch with Pureledge Exeter and have them check vitals on their stasis beds. What’s on the other sides of these walls? A computer establishment on the northeast side, right?”
“Dell Bio & Mech. It’s an AB tech gift shop. In the building on the opposite side is Madame Fifi’s Feather, Scale, and Fur. She’s an amdroid stylist.”
“The vic was killed elsewhere, Shad. Why dump the body on Parliament?”
“Say, Jaggs, how come this—it’s not wide enough to call an alley—how come this particular crack between two buildings is called a street?”
“I’ll have you know, Shad, Exeter’s Parliament Street holds the record as the narrowest street in the world. As it was explained to me on a tour when I first came to Exeter, it had to do with some act of Parliament in the nineteenth century. The burghers on the city council took exception to the act, but really couldn’t do anything in retaliation except deliver an insult to the body that passed it. Hence they named the narrowest thoroughfare in the city Parliament Street. Rather silly, really.”
“Not at all,” objected Shad. “I mean, here we are centuries later and Exeter still has a Parliament Street. That is vendetta-grade grudge.” Shad’s mech nodded. “This town is really beginning to grow on me,” he said as he streaked off toward High to release the scene to the FMEs. Despairing for Shad’s value system, I ascended to the roof, flew grids on each, but found no cameras, latents, trace, impressions, feathers, scales, nor fur.
I had just completed my examination when I was joined by Shad’s micro coming over the High Street edge. “Someone at Pureledge finally answered the phone,” he announced. “ID on the imprint is a six-month Pureledge rookie named Darcy Flanagan, eighty-seven, resides in a flat at Seventeen Hoopern Street. He began his shift at three this afternoon and he and his flight leader belong to 712 Squadron. The Seven-Twelve patrols the Cathedral Church of St. Peter.”
“Flight leader? Squadron?”
“That’s what they call them. The fellow on the phone said the scuttlebutt in the ready room at Castle Field is that Jerry got young Darcy.”
“Jerry? What is he talking about? Germans?”
“‘Hop in the old crate and tally ho! Chocks away!’ Jaggs, it was like talking to Fowler in Chicken Run.”
Fowler, the aged and absurdly militaristic dotty rooster in the old Nick Park animated feature—voice done by Benjamin Whitrow—seemed to think he was in the Royal Air Force rather than a chicken yard. Every AI, and particularly every amdroid, knew the classic Chicken Run almost by rote. Decades ago the beheading-of-Edwina scene on the telly and bio blogs in combination with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Grant v. Hudder helped put the AI Rights Act in Britain over the top. “What did he mean, ‘young Darcy’? You said the fellow was eighty-seven.”
“Average age of ‘the lads’ is ninety-three,” countered Shad.
“I see.”
“Ledge marshals maintain continuous sync between bodies and bios, which would be good for us except they checked what they call their barracks. Darcy Flanagan the human natural is dead.”
“Poor fellow. Did they say how?”
“Sudden massive heart attack according to the stasis bed readout. Too severe for the bed to maintain him and he was past revival by the time their medical mech reached him. Pureledge has a lot of really old pensioners as ledge marshals. They make a little cash and for a few hours a day they get to fly, serve a useful purpose, and feel young and pain free, according to the fellow on the phone, a Mr. James Duggan. Duggan says six to eight of the old coves cack out in the barrack racks every year.”
“Hard done by Flanagan’s demise, was he?”
“The poor guy could hardly butter his crumpet. Jaggs, the stasis bed recorded Flanagan’s death at eight minutes to five this evening. The pigeon bio died eleven seconds later. Unless Flanagan managed to bust up his own pigeon suit like that, it’s murder. That means media.” The duck tossed his next question around in his head a bit before reluctantly asking it. “What do we do about Parker?”
I thought on that. “To be perfectly candid, Shad, I’m not terribly sanguine about having our end of the inquiry represented by an incontinent gorilla with self-esteem issues.”
His micro swung around and looked deeply into the shadows. “Man, I can’t believe I’ve come down to this. When I was the spokescritter for that insurance company, I used to have staff, bill polish, ermine feather extensions, my own dressing room. You should’ve seen my apartment in New York, Jaggs. I had a fountain in my living room! Ledge marshals. Gorilla poop.”
“Those, Shad, are the challenging, exciting, ever-changing facets of a fulfilling career in ABCD law enforcement.”
He dropped a heavy sigh and shook all over. “Sorry about the whining. About Parker, the division doesn’t need any more bad air. Do we go to Matheson and take over the case?”
I pushed Shad’s suggestion around in my mind for a moment. Neither Shad nor I were there to hurt other cops, especially those who, like us, had been flushed down into ABCD due to mishap, misunderstanding, or murder. I’d already put a smudge on Parker’s record by refusing to work with him. The whole Parliament Street case was looking, however, like a giant slapstick aimed directly at ABCD Devon’s collective posterior.
“Back to the cruiser, Shad. We copy into our own suits, and secure our evidence. Then we report to the command post and see where things go from there.”
In the cruiser, copied into our own skins, Shad gave the cruiser instructions to come up on Broadgate by a circuitous route. By swinging out over Queen Street, heading southeast, and doubling back over St. Peters Cathedral, we might lessen our chances of attracting notice.
Shad faced me. “What if Parker cut back on the bananas? Less in, less out.”
“Been tried. The fellow is addicted. He has them squirreled away everywhere. A few months before you came to the Devon office, Shad, Parker and I were assigned to represent ABCD at an award ceremony at the Royal Diana Devon & Cornwall Force Museum theater.”
“Handing out attaboys to the local blue?”
“Yes, although we call the medals gongs. A very solemn occasion officiated by Chief Constable Crowe. In attendance were two Members of Parliament, the Earl of Devon, and Her Royal Highness Princess Mehitabel. Matheson and I took Parker’s bananas away, dehydrated him, and tried to keep an eye on him. Nevertheless, he managed to tuck away a bunch or two before the ceremony.”
“Naw. He didn’t,” said Shad.
“Oh, indeed he did, ducky. What’s more, Parker didn’t even notice he’d done it. Nothing quite like a fellow dropping his load before royalty right in the middle of bleeding ‘God Save The King’.”
“Make the news, did it?”
“Shad, Matheson’s office was showered with media thank-you notes and fruit baskets.
“What’d the superintendent say when you all got back to the tower?”
“He called us into his office, pointed at his telly, and stared at Parker, his finger trembling. Matheson’s face went bright red and he did a respectable impression of a beached cod. Then he waved us out of his office, came up behind us, and slammed the door.”
“British reserve, wot, wot, Jaggers old sock?” he said using his Fowler voice.
“Frightening, actually. The superintendent really does bear a striking resemblance to John Dillinger. I half expected to be perforated by a Tommy gun. He ordered Parker into therapy.”
“To potty train him?” asked Shad.
“That’s what it amounted to.” I looked down through my window. The red air-vehicle warning lights above the crenellated spires crowning the Norman towers of St. Peters glowed softly on and off below. “He went faithfully twice each week and Matheson received in return a lot of cleaning bills and the therapist’s conclusion that gorillas—gorilla bios, in any event—cannot be trained in that regard. There are no internal warning signs noticeable to the gorilla, so the gorilla simply delivers wherever it is whenever a shipment comes in.”
“Like the old joke,” observed Shad.
“Yes. Wherever he wants.”
Shad glanced down through his side window. “Oh boy. Hey, Jaggs? We’re over Broadgate. I don’t see the ABCD van.” He placed the cruiser in stationary hover.
He banked the cruiser my way and I looked down. Opposite Dell and Madame Fifi’s side of High Street was St. Petrocks. Between the block upon which that church stood and the block opposite the Guildhall was Broadgate: a short, wide, shop-festooned thoroughfare connecting High Street and Cathedral Yard. Parked in Broadgate were three tellynet media vans, a blogosphere pool mobile, a Devon Forensic Medical Examiner’s van, and a constabulary electric, presumably Sergeant Dunn’s. There were no vehicles of any kind belonging to ABCD and no ABCD personnel I recognized, not even a furtive mountain gorilla in the shadows stealthily evacuating his bowels.
“Bugger,” I remarked.
Shad’s comment was earthier but equally apt.
There was nothing to do but head to Heavitree Consolidated Police Administration Tower in which the constabulary’s Exeter Station, Devon ABCD Interpol, and the Devon Magistrate’s Court were headquartered. As the cruiser came down from the St. James–Heavitree Air Vector Corridor, Shad brought us in over St. Luke’s College and Heavitree Hospital as we circled down to the sky dock on top of the tower. As we approached we could see that the media had already gathered far below at street level entrance. Up on the roof by himself someone very large, dark, hairy, and dejected was skulking next to the landing target. It was DC Parker. After coming in and docking in our assigned slot, we got out of the cruiser and walked across the target to the fellow.
As we approached Parker, Shad said to him in his Fowler voice, “I say, old hairball, the ruddy bloomin’ corpus is in the middle of flippin’ Parliament Street. Don’t Heavitree Tower strike you as rather inconvenient for a local command post, wot, wot?”
Upon witnessing Shad’s passive-aggressive performance, Parker’s massive shoulders sagged even farther as his incredibly ugly head hung down, his knuckles dragging against the rooftop.
“Terribly sorry, Inspector Jaggers,” he said, his voice rumbling eloquently in posh Oxford-educated tones. The urgency of his current predicament appeared to have frightened off his usual ape-of-the-people Estuary affectation. “I had the van on Broadgate, sir, but the tellies, bloggies, and shutter rats were everywhere waiting for me! Peering in the windows, underfoot, poking in their heads, all of them on geek hunts, and, good lord, the questions. Cameras . . . all aimed at the van. It was like they were waiting for me to . . . you know.”
“Yes,” I responded. “I know.”
“I didn’t want to let down the side again, inspector. I couldn’t’ve fit in that narrow passage in any event. Wouldn’t the tellies love seeing me try, though? That’s why I asked for someone else to work the scene. I’m so grateful to you and DS Shad.”
“You did the right thing, Parker,” I said.
“You see why I had to get out of there, don’t you?” The gorilla was motionless for a split second, then grew a bit wild-eyed. He suddenly grunted loudly, smacked his fist against the edge of the concrete landing target, cracking it. Suddenly DC Parker began turning about in a tiny circle, waving his heavily muscled arms above his head.
“Steady,” I cautioned as I backed away, almost stumbling over Shad who had managed to get behind me.
Parker stopped, lowered his arms, and slumped. “Sorry, but will no one in this bloody city ever forget that damned awards ceremony?” He thumped his chest angrily with his fists. Seeing that he startled me again and caused Shad to take wing, he said “Sorry. Terribly sorry, sir. Sorry sergeant.” He was even more crestfallen.
Shad settled further away from the gorilla. “Keep cool, Ralph. Okay?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“What seems to be the trouble, Parker?” I prompted.
He sadly shook his head, his gaze somewhere around my feet. “It all began at Royal Diane. Before that ceremony I was just another cop bio trying to make a place for himself in ABCD. After that ceremony I was a worldwide joke. There were tourists here last summer from Kazakhstan, inspector. From Kazakhstan! Their children had these bloody little animated stuffed gorilla toys! They sing ‘God Save The King’ and then poop little licorice sweeties! I simply can’t bear it!”
“I never got my own action figure,” muttered the duck sullenly.
Parker held out his massive hands. “Princess Mehitabel has forgiven me. I wrote her soon after . . .”
“After the goods were delivered,” completed still sullen Shad.
“Her Highness’s secretary wrote me a few weeks ago. He wrote—well, his letter said that Princess Mehitabel understands completely, stuff happens and not to worry myself over it. Water under the bridge.” He let out his breath with what appeared to be his remaining resolve and looked up at me. “Inspector, should I tell the superintendent I can’t handle the Parliament Street inquiry? If I lead this case, the media’ll make a laughingstock of all of us.”
Shad and I glanced at each other for a beat; the duck shut his eyes, shrugged, and nodded once at me. I faced the gorilla. “Detective Constable Parker, you have an inquiry to run and I suggest you run it. Shad and I have worked the scene and we’re prepared to brief you on the evidence and the progress of the investigation. We will also back you up however we can. Leading this case will give you much needed experience. I expect you to make the most of it.”
There was a touch of panic in Parker’s expression. “It’s not just a dead pigeon, is it, sir?”
“It’s murder,” said Shad. “Murder most foul,” he added with a straight face.
“Shall we get on with the briefing?” I suggested.
“Yes, inspector.” Parker looked up at me with sad yellowish eyes. “What ever shall I do about the media?”
“Later we’ll need to prepare something. Right now we need to know how you wish us to proceed.”
Parker stared at me for two seconds, then frowned, reared back until he was at his full height, puffed out his chest, and bellowed, “Very well!” He thumped his chest with both fists several times, and bellowed, “Very well, then! We’ll grasp the nettle, shall we? On to Room 914!” On his knuckles and feet he scooted toward the access door, nearly ripped it off its hinges, and all thirty-five stone of him disappeared down into the stairwell, his parting cry of “Jam tomorrow!” echoing from below.
Something of stunned silence descended upon the roof. I glanced at my partner. “What happened to his accent?” asked Shad.
I shook my head. “For some reason he’s returned to Received Pronunciation. I believe he only adopted Estuary to fit in, which he never did.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
“Oxford graduate, you know.”
“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
I hoisted an eyebrow in Shad’s direction. “Murder most foul?”
The mallard nodded. “Murder Most Foul, directed by George Pollock, starring Margaret Rutherford, 1964.” Looking sideways at me, he said, “Foul, fowl, dead pigeon—get it? Huh? Huh?”
“Yes, yes. I quite get it,” I acknowledged painfully. “Thank you.”
“Any time. Give any thought to how we’re going to work this case with Parker running it? I mean, he gave you the perfect out. Why didn’t you take it?”
“As I recall, Shad, you nodded at me.”
“That’s because I’m a big marshmallow. You’re a tough old ex-London Metro murder cop and our leader. We depend upon you to keep us out of silly predicaments.”
I frowned deeply. “Shad, surely you see if Parker quits this case because he’s frightened of the media—”
“—among other things,” interrupted Shad.
“For any reason. Parker’s not stupid. He’s just—”
“Six cashews crazier than a Nutter Bar.”
“Shad, if he doesn’t lead this case and win doing it, he’ll be useless in the future both to ABCD and himself. We cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
“I suppose not.” Shad examined my face for a moment cocking his head to one side. “There’s something else, though, isn’t there?”
My gaze rested momentarily on the distant ground vehicle lights circling the St. Sidwell Roundabout west of the tower. “This insane degree of media attention over what appears to be a less-than-interesting case. Add to that the timing.”
Shad nodded. “You and I suddenly get the evening off, Towson’s out sick, Parker’s holding the fort all by his lonesome.”
I nodded. “The one detective who because of his copy phobia and size couldn’t possibly fit into the scene of the crime, the one detective who with each public bowel movement brings into question the seriousness of amdroids being in law enforcement at all, he’s the one who catches the case.”
“I checked the tower call log, Jaggs. Your newshound buddy Fido got the call to come to Parliament Street a good fifteen minutes before the Exeter cops notified ABCD.”
“Record on the call?”
“Throwaway mobile. Do you think that’s what the killer wants: ABCD to fall on its pratt and to look ridiculous in doing so?”
“Or someone using the occasion created by the killer. One question that remains to be answered is at whom this exercise has been aimed: Parker or ABCD.”
Shad cackled out a wak-wak-wak laugh. “If it’s Parker, that makes Nigel Towson our prime suspect.”
Despite an involuntary smile, I shook my head. “DS Towson may be dogging it, but he’s the grandfather of by-the-book cops. Former Royal Canadian Mounted Police, you know.”
“Yeah.” Shad shuddered. “I heard about that grizzly attack in the Yukon. Lucky his head was found by that RCMP tracking unit and they could copy his engrams into one of their bloodhound bios.”
“Yes. And as soon as he finished copying, he continued tracking down the killer he’d been after. Got his man, too. A lesser cop would’ve gone after the bear.”
“The media should hear some of these stories—how the cops in ABCD got here—rather than focusing on Parker’s poop and all this silliness.”
“Wouldn’t that be a treat? The media have programmed this city to expect ABCD to fall on its face and have a big laugh every time we do. Our success with the Hound Tor case, though, and getting blown up out on the moor stepped on their laugh lines rather severely. They seem grimly determined to get back to the giggles. That is why we must succeed in this inquiry, Shad. We must succeed, look magnificently competent in doing so, and with Parker in charge.”
The duck leveled a gaze at me. “And we are going to bring this to pass how?”
I looked down my Basil Rathbone nose at him and arched an eyebrow. “ I have brushed in the broad outlines of the concept, dear boy. Fill in the details.” I pointed at the open door to downstairs. “Shall we brief our lead on his murder case?”
“Oh, let’s do.” Shad waddled toward the door muttering gloomily about computer-generated lizards, penthouses, Waterford Crystal birdbaths, action figures, and outrageous fortune.
Room 914 looked like every other interrogation room in every police station in every country in the world: featureless pale beige walls, white light panel above a plain white plastic table flanked by two sets of composite wood stools on opposite sides, audio-visual recording controls in a black enameled wall panel next to the desk. The only way 914 differed from other interrogation rooms was that it was en suite, or as Shad would have it, the room had an attached crapper. I sat on a stool at the table, Shad squatted upon the table, and Parker sat in the loo with the room’s door open—undignified, perhaps, but with olfactory compensations.
Through the open door Shad briefed Parker on the scene of the crime, the position and condition of Darcy Flanagan’s bio, and the impact and trace evidence. “Flanagan was killed elsewhere and dumped at the scene,” said Parker.
“Shad and I concur.”
“Security cameras in the area?”
I looked at Shad. He shook his head. “Nothing yet,” he said to the toilet door. “I’ve downloaded the area traffic surveillance records for this evening into the Heavitree mainframe as well as the private security recordings. The tech mechs are just getting started on them.”
The toilet flushed, but Parker failed to emerge. Nothing but silence for a long uncomfortable stretch.
“Parker?” I called at last.
“Sorry, sir. I was just thinking. What if Flanagan’s body was carefully inserted into Parliament Street for a purpose?”
“What purpose?”
“A political statement.”
Shad and I exchanged glances. “Dead bird in an alley—vote for Arthur Q. Schnebble?” cracked Shad.
“Hear me out, sergeant,” said Parker. “The deceased is a bio, isn’t he? We’re right in the middle of AB Emancipation Week, right? E-Week marks the Parliamentary Reform Act of 2132, which maintains suffrage for the human engram imprint, even onto mechanical or non-human bios, and it extends suffrage to artificially created intelligences otherwise qualifying as independent intelligent beings. See?”
Shad and I exchanged additional confused glances.
“It’s symbolic, sir,” continued Parker. “See, if Flanagan was purposefully dumped on Parliament Street, it may well hearken back to the original reform act that led to that little passage being named after Parliament. A possibility?”
Mallards don’t have eyebrows, but I swear Shad’s went up. “Parker, I bet you could tell me what the original act of Parliament was that lead to the naming of Parliament Street.”
“Yes, sergeant. It was the Reform Act of 1832. The act changed a number of laws in Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales regarding representation in Parliament, but the main thing it did was to increase the number of males who could vote by approximately thirty percent.”
“Fair to say it extended suffrage to the less worthy?” Shad inquired.
“That was certainly how the Exeter city fathers regarded it at the time. As we are all aware, that’s how the archbishop and the rest of the anti-AB crowd today currently regard the Act of 2132.”
I pondered that in silence for a moment. I glanced at Shad. He was looking at the tabletop. Once he had concluded shaking out his feathers from his head to his tail, he looked at me and said, “Well, gang, this nothing case fairly reeks with significant coincidence.”
“If DC Parker is correct in his facts,” I cautioned.
“He is. Checked it all out on Ferdie’s Freepaedia,” Shad explained. “Parker—” he began but stopped short. “Autopsy report coming in,” he said, his eyes focused at an invisible point between the toilet door and myself. “Flanagan’s human meat suit likely died as a result of a heart attack induced by the violent death of his pigeon bio. Death in the pigeon bio was caused by a broken rib through the heart as the result of blunt force trauma, the weapon being circular, approximately seven centimeters in diameter, convex in shape, fabric enclosed, flexible—”
“Shad,” I interrupted, “doesn’t that sound like one of those old beanbag loads for a what-do-you-call-it?”
A brief pause as Shad consulted Ferdie’s, then he said, “Gas gun. They were miscreant-safe weapons for use in riot control. The thirty-seven millimeter gas gun fired a 7.5 centimeter fabric-covered flexible baton filled with a 150 grams of lead shot.”
“Sounds like one of those could do a dandy job of mangling a pigeon,” said Parker.
Shad faced the toilet. “They’re antiques, Parker. We’ve got greasefoot, flashnet, and stunspray now. Gas guns haven’t been used anywhere for anything in over a century.”
Before I could suggest Parker put in a search for gas guns in Devon, he mentioned it himself. “Research will keep me out of public view,” he offered contritely as a wistful note came into his voice. “That’s what I used to do, you know. Research.”
Shad looked at me and held out his wings questioningly as the voice from the loo fell silent.
“Parker was once a police historian,” I explained. “Oxford, wasn’t it, Parker?”
“Yes,” he replied gloomily. “‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!’”
I glanced at Shad.
“Wordsworth,” Shad muttered back at me. Facing the door to the toilet he began to ask a question—probably concerning just how a police historian in Oxford wound up as a gorilla bio—when another call came in on Shad’s interface. “Tox screen on Flanagan.” He stood and faced me, nonexistent eyebrows arched. “Alcohol. In Flanagan’s blood. Enough to pickle a pigeon.”
We all thought on that for a moment. It was a case wrinkle with which none of us knew what to do just then. Shad’s tail resumed twitching, signifying another incoming call.
“The person who reported finding the body, Parker,” I said, “did he or she ever show?”
“Yes. Sharissa Thule. She’s a thirty-one year old woman—human natural—from Dawlish. She was in the city shopping and visiting relatives and was on her way from the Guildhall Shopping Centre to have tea at the Milkmaid on Catherine. She found the body on Parliament and reported it to a constable.”
“Why would a nat report a dead bird to the police unless she knew it was a bio?” I asked.
“She could tell it was a bio. I gather Ms. Thule carries a marker detector.”
“Really. Why?”
“The way she put it, sir, ‘I want to know whether to pet a cute little doggie on the head or send the bloody pervert packing.’ A bit anti-amdroid. Said something about a wolfhound in Lympstone two summers ago. The creature rubbed against her leg rather passionately. Turned out to be an amdroid.”
Shad’s tail stopped twitching; he spread his wings and faced me, his bill hanging open. He froze that way for almost a minute, and then said, “They want me back!”
“Sorry?”
“They want me back!” He lowered his wings and began pacing rapidly in a circle. “That was my New York agent. Barton Stanky? The duck stockholders somehow regained control of the insurance conglomerate over the lizard people—I don’t know the details, but Barton baby says the corporation stock has been diving for the bottom ever since their advertising firm dumped the duck! The clients have been demanding the return of the duck! Aa-flak!” he cried “Aa-flak! They want me back!”
“I swear, Val, I have the karma of Tantalus,” I said later at home as I poked at the shepherd’s pie Val had Walter prepare for me. Walter, the mech who did our cooking and housework, had even made spotted dick for dessert, but I could only pick at it.
“I finally get a partner I can work with—that I like—and bleeding Madison Avenue wants to make Shad a flipping billionaire clowning around and falling on his pratt to sell insurance.”
“How nice for Guy. He was so unhappy to be let go,” she said, her aqua eyes focused on mine. She sat across from me on the table, her tail wrapped around her legs. “Aren’t you happy for him?”
“Oh,” I let out my breath and turned my scowl toward my dinner. “Of course I am, dear. I am being quite selfish.”
“A tad.”
I took a breath, let it out, and tried a bit of pie. “This is rather good, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Walter said he was trying a new recipe.”
“Excellent.” I leaned back in my chair, took a sip of tea, replaced the cup on the table, and smiled at her. “I suppose if I got a call from Metro to go back to London the sonic boom of my run back to the Yard would uproot half the trees in southern England. Thanks for being patient with me, dear.”
“Cats are nothing if not patient, Harry.”
“I’ll miss Shad, though. He saved my life in that stable out at Hound Tor Hunts. We’ve talked old films for hours, and he tells the most outlandish stories. His rather disrespectful comments of certain political and police personalities from time to time have kept me in stitches, not to mention his terrible puns. Did I tell you—”
“Murder most fowl,” she interrupted.
“Yes. Sorry. I forget at times.” Val walked the length of the table and seated herself next to my left shoulder. “Looks as though this might be my last case with Shad,” I said to her.
“If that’s so, Harry, make it a good one.”
“Of course. We’ll make it a good one—if we can. Parker’s career—ABCD’s existence—may well depend upon it.”
“What’s on for tomorrow?”
“Parker will be tracking down antique beanbag guns while Shad and I question Flanagan’s coworkers. We’ll see if we can piece together Darcy Flanagan’s movements prior to his demise.”
“Do you know yet what to do about Ralph Parker leading the case? I’ll never forget the horror of that ceremony at the Royal Diane Museum when I saw it on the telly.”
“Many of us have been having rather fearsome flashbacks this evening on that account. After we briefed Parker, I prepared and read a brief statement to the reporters and took no questions. They didn’t like that at all. Hardly any of the questions they tried to ask were about the murder.”
“About Ralph?” she asked.
I nodded. “Sooner or later, Parker is going to have to face the media if he’s going to lead this case.”
“Ralph must be so worried.”
“A concern shared by a small but anxious legion at ABCD, my dear.”
The next morning constables from the Exeter Station brought in only a single coworker of Darcy Flanagan’s, a pigeon bio named Tommy Shay. He was a deep-gray bird with gleaming white wing bands, a blued-gunmetal colored hood that came down to his shoulders, white beak, and deep pink feet—a much more handsome model than that flown by the deceased. Shay was a flight lieutenant and the commander of Puss-in-Boots Flight, the late Darcy Flanagan’s unit. The remaining two members of Puss-in-Boots, flying officers Jock Munro and Art Krauthammer, were in hospice at Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital where Pureledge kept Munro and Krauthammer’s stasis beds. Both were in their late nineties and bedridden, hence unavailable until they came on duty at three in the afternoon, should they live so long.
Flight Lieutenant Shay was brought in wearing his pigeon suit, which for him was a permanent arrangement. It seems that the year before, ninety-seven-year-old Tommy Shay cacked out on his barracks stasis bed at Castle Street while his engrams were still on patrol at St. Peters. “When that happens,” Shay said from his perch on a stool at the interrogation table, “Pureledge lets their old time employees live out their lives wearing wings, if they like. Those who take to it permanent even get a new bio once the old pigeon goes toes up.”
“Generous of the company,” I said.
The pigeon shrugged. “Pigeon bios is cheap when you get ’em by the thousand. Builds good will with the lads, though.”
“And for you?” I asked.
“A pigeon on this side o’ the dirt’s better’n worms on t’ other, the way I looks at it,” he answered philosophically.
Shad squatted on the end of the table as I leaned my elbows on it. “What can you tell us about Darcy Flanagan?” Shad asked the pigeon.
“Not much, sergeant. See, the RPAF is kind like the old French Foreign Legion. You get a job, training, equipment, burial expenses, and no questions.”
“RPAF?” asked Shad.
“Royal Pigeon Air Force,” answered Shay.
“Is that actually connected to the British military?”
Shay shook his head at the duck. “No, guv. Haw! The RPAF is just somethin’ the original lads dreamed up to make the job a bit more fun. Long as we keep Jerry off the ledges, company don’t mind.”
“Tell us what you can about Darcy,” I said.
“Darcy joined the 712 middle of June. He was issued one of them old-line model pigeon suits. We calls ’em ‘Hurricanes.’”
“I noticed,” I said, “that your bio is much better looking than Flanagan’s.”
“Better performin’ too. This here is a Spitfire,” said Shay, opening and closing his wings, turning about, giving Shad and me a good look. “We calls ’em Spits. Great improvement over the Hurricane, detective. Better speed, climb, and dive rates, higher ceiling, more maneuverable, can take a whale more punishment, too. I rammed me a couple o’ pushy ravens settin’ up house on a turret on the cathedral south tower in this suit back in March. Tangled toes with the buggers, I did, ‘til they got discouraged and headed for the countryside. Never mussed a feather of me own.” He looked at Shad. “Raven’s bigger’n a pigeon,” he explained.
“Do tell,” Shad responded. “About Flanagan?” he urged.
“Oh. Well, Castle Field was short o’ Spits when young Darcy joined 712. Still is.” He faced me. “I do believe Artie Krauthammer got the last Spit.”
“Darcy?” I reminded him.
“Right. So when Darcy shows at flight school, I looks at that old Hurricane bag o’ feathers and says I to Squadron Leader Haverill, ‘Les,’ I says to him, ‘you can’t send the kid up in a crate like that!’”
I glanced at Shad. He appeared to be gnawing on the edge of his own wing.
“Squadron leader says Flanagan flies the Hurricane ‘til the new Spits come in. ‘Make do,’ says he.”
“Well, Tommy,” I said as I faced Shay, “How did he do?”
“Oh, he took to flying well enough. Loved it so, he did. Inspector, you take dim eyes, sore knees, bad back, weak heart, a scarred liver, and no wind, leave that all behind and put on wings—even one o’ them Hurricanes—and all you wants is to get up in the sky—” Shay interrupted himself, looked down lost in thought for a moment, then he faced me. “On patrol though, sometimes he’d lag behind. Hurricanes just can’t keep up with Spits. We’d get to diving on Jerry, chasing him ’round the towers . . . well, sometimes Darcy wouldn’t quite be on time. Tried to keep down the speed, but in the heat of the chase—”
“Tally ho,” said Shad.
“Exactly. See, Puss-in-Boots Flight patrols the south side of St. Peters. I ain’t unfair in sayin’ we’re hard done by with just the one flight. Wolf Flight has the north cathedral patrol which is just that side o’ the church. Red Riding Hood Flight only has Mol’s, St. Martins, and them other old shops on Cathedral Close. Cinderella Flight’s only got east end o’ Cathedral Yard, the Royal Clarence and a couple shops. On the cathedral’s south side, though, Puss-in-Boots’s got half the cathedral plus the Cloisters, plus the Diocesan House, and plus the Bishop’s bleedin’ Palace.”
“And Flanagan couldn’t keep up,” I urged.
“What I thought I done was make a problem into a virtue, inspector. After a few days I put him on lone patrol flying the Diocesan House and the Bishop’s Palace. Just surveillance, mind. While me, Jock, and Art buzzed Jerry off the rest, Darcy would patrol his part and send up the balloon if he saw Jerry heading his way. We’d come running and the four of us would roust the Hun and chase ’em off.”
“So for most of the shift—ah, patrol—you wouldn’t see Flanagan at all,” said Shad.
The pigeon nodded. “True enough, but he’d radio in every so often when he’d see Jerry or to check in. It was just until Darcy got his Spit.” The bird thought for a moment. “It worked good for a few weeks. Darcy would put in a call and the rest o’ the lads’d come a-runnin’. Kept the ledges pristine, we did.” Shay fell silent, shook his head. “Then Darcy stopped calling in for help. He could do it on his own. When I’d check, the ledges were clean, so I left well enough alone.”
“And yesterday?” I asked.
“Patrol started at three, our flight was posted and Darcy peeled off for the palace. We got two calls from Darcy that first hour. Both times he said he’d taken care of Jerry on his own. We got no more calls. It were busy on the south side. Besides Jerrys, there was dole bums and pige freaks—other pigeon bios. They had us fagged, so it wasn’t ‘til a bit before five I radioed Darcy, see how he was makin’ out. I got no answer and ordered the flight onto Darcy’s patrol area. He wasn’t there. We split up and searched all over for him, but couldn’t find a feather. Can’t see how he wound up on Parliament Street. That’s way out of our patrol area.”
“Did Flanagan drink?” asked Shad.
“Darcy’s Irish so he has to put away his jar, right?” Shay said scornfully. He glanced at me, then faced Shad as he adopted a completely phony uncaring demeanor, standing slouched upon his stool. “Wouldn’t know about Darcy drinkin’, sergeant. Surely wouldn’t. Don’t socialize with the lads off duty. Wouldn’t be none o’ my concern anyway, would it?”
“On duty,” I said. “Did he drink on duty?”
“Do I look like a stool pigeon to you?” he demanded.
Shad was back to chewing on his wing. I found a sudden need to rub my eyes. “Flanagan’s autopsy,” gasped Shad, “it showed that he’d been drinking quite a bit before he was killed.”
“A wee touch o’ the dew, eh?”
“He was pissed,” I insisted.
Tommy Shay raised his right wing. “God’s honest truth, detective, I never seen young Darcy take a drink on or off duty.”
“So, the last time you saw him was at the beginning of the patrol, three pm, and the last time you heard from him was before four.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of transmission range you birds have?” asked Shad.
“About twenty-five kilometers before there’s a noticeable drop in signal strength.”
“That narrows it down,” he said sarcastically.
Shay looked from Shad to me. “What’s he mean?”
“Hell, man.” I held out my hands. “Flanagan could’ve been in bloody Exmouth for those two transmissions for all you knew.”
Although Tommy Shay felt bad about young Darcy, we got nothing more useful out of him. We detained him, however, until we had a chance to brief Parker.
After we delivered our report through the open toilet door in Room 914, our aromatic leader said, “There are nine gas guns registered in England. The Manchester Worker’s Museum has one, the Imperial War Museum in London has one, the British Museum has two, all four inoperable according to museum curators. The police force museum in Bristol has two, one of them possibly operable. The Royal Diane Museum here in Exeter has one, functional according to the curator. Of the remaining two, Morton Geller, an antique weapons dealer in Leeds, has one. Mr. Geller believes that with the investment of just a few hundred quid the gas gun he has in inventory might be made operable, although he hasn’t a clue where to obtain ammunition for it. The remaining gas gun belongs to the Office of the Bishop of Exeter.”
“Whoa!” said Shad, looking at me. I faced the door to the WC.
“Parker, what about that last?”
“The lord bishop, Dr. Reginald Koch. His secretary will get back to us about the gun. Apparently they cannot locate it. No one recalls seeing it ever and the last record of its existence is a century old.” Parker punctuated his finding by flushing the toilet.
Shad looked at me. “That might even be a clue.”
While Parker continued his investigations and sorting through the surveillance videos, Shad and I arranged with Flight Leader Tommy Shay, 712 Squadron Leader Patricia Kwela—a.k.a. “Mother Goose”—and Pureledge Exeter Manager Lucinda Martini for Shad and me to go undercover that evening as ledge marshals, Puss in Boots Flight, 712 Squadron, Royal Pigeon Air Force.
Since we were new to the service, Shad and I had to arrive at Pureledge two hours early for flight training. Shad put the cruiser down on High Street at Castle, we climbed out, then he sent it back to Heavitree Tower. Castle Street there is a wide park-like thoroughfare given over to foot traffic, mercilessly hard stainless steel benches from another age, the occasional tree, and the obligatory busker or three. That afternoon, despite the chill, entertainment was provided by a kangaroo bio singing “Charlie Is My Darling” with a Scottish accent to the accompaniment of a banjo played by a joey bio located in the ’roo’s pouch. Shad actually coded a fiver into the creditron in the open banjo case at the ’roo’s feet.
“Tough business,” he explained as he waddled up past Musgrave Row toward the rounded white south-facing side of the Pureledge building. Castle went up the left side of Pureledge, a narrower street named Little Castle went up the right. The pigeon chasing company’s building was the southernmost of the buildings bounded by the two Castle streets and on the south by the doglegged joining of Musgrave Row and Bailey. The building itself was a five-story Neo-Georgian structure with multi-paned double-hung windows above and larger display windows at street level the panes of which displayed graphics mostly of Exeter’s various buildings and monuments, pristine and pigeon free. A lone “before” graphic showed a beer stone statue of some king, lord, or martyr from the west facade at St. Peters Cathedral, a furtive-looking pigeon behind the statue’s right shoulder guarding a huge black nest that extended behind the statue’s head and to its left shoulder. Pigeon waste coated the statue’s shoulders and folded arms. At the bottom of the poster was printed, “Don’t let this happen to you.”
The top floor of the building was set back, the windows forming part of a metal roof. Those windows were open and a group of about forty pigeons exited one of the windows on the left and took a westerly heading. There was something strange about how they were flying. “Shad?”
“I see it. Don’t know what it is.” He glanced back at me. “It’s like they’re doing a continuous stadium wave in different directions with their wings but I can’t follow it with my eyes. Weird.” He waddled the semicircle to the Castle Street entrance and entered.
The receptionist was a rather attractive human nat in her early thirties named Naomi Foon, according to her illuminated plastic desking accessory. She appeared quite normal in lavender pantaloon and vest business attire, spiked black hair with lavender tips, and matching lavender communications array plugged into her right ear. In fact everything about the sales floor of Pureledge was traditional: liquid crystal walnut paneling, virtual gaslight, plush red algae carpeting, hand-painted ties on the sales agents, and the reek of preserved Albion, which is what they were selling, after all.
Receptionist Foon took our names and looked over her desk down at Shad. “I don’t believe we’ve ever before had a ducky as one of our flyers.” She batted her feather extended eyelashes and flashed Shad a smile.
“I’m already in a low paying job and I thought I’d explore some of the other options available in poverty,” he said.
She nodded vacantly. “We once had a wildebeest bio.”
“Why would a wildebeest want to be a pigeon?” I asked.
“He was a very old wildebeest,” she explained. Her lavender streaked eyebrows went up. “Not that I’m implying either of you gentlemen are very old.” She looked at me. “I would say, Mr. Jaggers, that you look very young to be one of our flyers. How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“The bio was grown forty-five; I’ve had it twelve years. The engrams are . . .” I had to think for a moment. “The engrams are ninety-three.”
“You look just like Sherlock Holmes—you know, in the old telly flicks? That actor, Basir Redbone?”
“Hadn’t noticed it myself.”
She looked at Shad. “I would say you are a young-looking duck.”
“Ducks never show their age until they find themselves plucked, glazed, and surrounded by chopsticks,” responded Shad curtly. “Where do we go?”
“Second floor,” she answered. “Good hunting, fellows.”
As we went to the elevator, I asked Shad, “Are you looking for a fight or has that fellow from the Chinese restaurant been lurking around Rougemont again?”
“Sorry there, Holmes. Things on my mind.”
“Things theatrical?”
We entered the elevator, the doors formed and hardened, and Shad barked “Two” at the control panel. He looked up at me as the car elevated. “I guess I’m a little torn between work here and going back to doing commercials.”
“Ever since that lizard bumped you out of your advert slot and you wound up in ABCD you’ve been unhappy, Shad. Now they want you back. I’d think you’d be quite pleased.”
The car stopped and the doors softened and faded. Shad didn’t move. “I know. But I’ve had a ball working with you, Jaggs. I kind of like Exeter. There’s Nadine, of course. Hell, Jaggs, you saved my life out at Hangingstone.”
“I’ll not be happy to see you go, Shad, although I will enjoy seeing you on the telly again. You’re the only television star I’ve ever known. Val is very happy for you. So am I.”
“Well, it’s been a sincere privilege to work with someone who looks so much like Basir Redbone, wak, wak, w—”
Shad was staring straight ahead, his countenance frozen. I turned to look at what had captured his attention. We stepped out into the room. The second floor looked like a military officer’s club from the midtwentieth century, leather-covered overstuffed chairs, dim lights, a piano mech that played itself, and dozens of posters on the walls and ceiling of fighter aircraft of World War II, with several of the Hurricane but mostly of the Spitfire: Spits diving, climbing, turning, shooting, on floats, and on wheels. The piano mech was playing “The White Cliffs of Dover” and accompanying itself with a familiar sounding female voice. I glanced at Shad and he said, “Vera Lynn,” in answer to my unasked question.
“How do you know it’s Vera Lynn?”
“I recognize her from the end of Dr. Strangelove when she sang ‘We’ll Meet Again.’”
“Ah, yes. With the nuclear mushroom clouds going up. Nineteen sixty-six?”
“’Sixty-four,” he corrected. “Get a load of this room, Jaggs. I feel like Errol Flynn in Dawn Patrol.” He nodded his head toward a strange-looking mech who was approaching us silently on soft rubber wheels. She was wearing a starched white dress, white cap, and a short midnight blue cape. The mech’s right eye looked human. The left eye glowed green, resembling a night scope with a variety of interchangeable lenses and filters. Instead of fingers her hands bristled with sensors, various tools such as a rubber hammer, tongue depressor, and things that poked, stuck, cut, sewed, cleansed, taped, and perhaps knitted for all I could tell. The most formidable of these instruments was a sensor that resembled a huge rubber finger.
“I’m Nurse Florence,” she announced in a raspy voice. As she came to a halt, her big rubber finger thrust up toward a poster of a ME 109 going down in flames.
“I’m just a little duck,” Shad whimpered to the nurse in a tiny voice.
The big rubber finger retracted and was replaced by a smaller, but still fearsome, digit. “Follow me,” she commanded.
“Chocks away, lad,” I said to Shad. As we followed Nurse Florence to the examination rooms, the piano mech struck up the Glenn Miller version of “Little Brown Jug.”
After our stasis bed physicals, about which the less said the better, we were escorted to a third floor room which housed approximately eighty triple bunk stasis beds, about half of which were filled with old men, old women, old bios, and at least one very rusty mech. “Two-sixty-four Squadron,” whispered our escort, a tech mech named Watkins. “Them’s the blokes you chaps’ll relieve once you get in the air.” In the 712 area, along with a woman in her seventies named Mathilda, Shad and I copied into our Hurricane pigeon suits. Watkins ran the three of us and eight other “chicks” directly to the roof where we met Hell’s pigeon.
“You lot will never make it.”
Flight Sergeant Ponsonby marched up and down our file of eleven ledge marshal trainees, his gray, black, and white Spit feathers glossed back, his pink toes gleaming with some sort of gloss, and something resembling a chopstick thrust beneath his left wing. He alternated his growling and barking with the following: “You lot come creepin’ up on me roof from hospital, from the flippin’ dole queue, from bloomin’ Bide-A-Wee Nursin’ Home, or hidin’ out from old bill or the missus happy as you please, all fired up to singe Jerry’s tail feathers for Pureledge’s tenner, and not a bleedin’ clue how to get in the bleedin’ air. Just look at you feather bags. I might as well be talkin’ to a stack of flippin’ flapjacks—”
And so on. Once flight sergeant was finished with his set piece, he bellowed, “Staff!” and two pigeons emerged marching from in back of us. Through a series of shouts, bellows, shoves, and curses they herded us over to a skylight. Standing upon the edge of the raised casement looking down upon us was a one-legged, one-eyed pigeon Spit with one droopy wing. The missing undercarriage limb had been replaced by a red plastic peg leg. The missing eye was covered by a black patch held in place by a thin black elastic band.
“I am Squadron Leader Leslie Haverill, ground commander of Castle Field,” he said in a calm voice. “I, Flight Sergeant Ponsonby, and the staff personnel at Castle Field welcome you to RPAF, Exeter. I know you’ll do well here, become part of our rich tradition, and be credits to the Royal Pigeon Air Force.”
Squadron Leader Haverill then read us Kings Regulations pertaining to private investigators, guards, watch officers, and ledge marshals. Curiously enough, besides chasing pigeons and other fowl off ledges, unlike detectives from the Artificial Beings Crimes Division, ledge marshals were actually allowed to detain suspects and make arrests. In cases of pigeon and other fowl bios carrying human imprints, those trespassing on private, company, corporate, or government property protected by Pureledge were subject to arrest using whatever force necessary to subdue said arrestee. Miscreants thus detained were then to be turned over to the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary, Exeter Police Station. There was, in addition, a robust course in beak-to-toe combat during which Staff Foster—a Spit pigeon wearing a tiny set of prescription goggles—mentioned that all those staffing ground and flight schools had been killed in action. That is, their suits reclining in stasis had cacked out. Like Tommy Shay, they had opted to remain in wings.
“What happened to the squadron leader’s Spit?” asked Shad when we were on break.
“Terrible thing, lad,” answered Sgt. Foster shaking his head, his voice lowered. “A year ago squadron leader used to command 331 of the First, covering Rougemont Castle down to High and southwest to Iron Bridge. Out on the rooftops, towers, and ledges, lads: That’s where Jerry is; that’s where we expect the attack.” He shook his head sadly. “Danger’s all around, lads, everywhere. See, back then we had a brand new pilot officer assigned to 712, lad by name of Kumar. He took to that Spit like he was born to it. Once off the tower and he was airborne. A natural flyer. Only with us a few days, though. Disappeared, he did. They only found a feather or two over by the Royal Clarence. Must’ve took on a falcon or hawk. Snapped him up quick as Bob’s your uncle his parts parceled out ’mongst Henry and the other hawk chicks in the nest I imagine. Heart of an eagle, young Kumar, but he had the body of a pigeon and the judgment of a scone. You find a hawk or falcon squattin’ in your patrol area, flyer, you call it in. Special Unit goes after the big ones.”
“Haverill?” prompted Shad.
“Don’t be impatient, lad.” He regarded Shad down the length of his beak. “Let’s see, then. Squadron Leader Haverill in his pigeon suit was cuttin’ through 712’s stasis beds when Kumar went down. Kumar, he slams awake all stressed from bein’ turned into hawk vittles. Wildebeest bio, he was. Sprung right off that bed he did, hit the ceiling, and landed on Haverill all four hoofs a-runnin’ at the same time. Tore up squadron leader proper.” Foster faced me. “Took poor Kumar in his wildebeest suit that night and run him straight off to the wigpicker works, bleedin Happy Valley, they did. Still there, poor lad.” He returned his goggled gaze to Shad. “Pieced squadron leader together but his flyin’ days was done for. Took him out of the air and made him ground commander.”
“Why the prescription goggles, Staff?” asked Shad, nodding toward flight’s set. “Aren’t all Spit bios genetically coded for good eyesight?”
“Well, lad, that were a cock-up of me own. I joined back when each squadron did it’s own flight training. About eight years ago it was. They sent me straight into the 994 patrol area south o’ the Guildhall. Only an hour or so in the air, lad, then we was on break. I put down on a windowsill by the Catacombs. Nice little stairclimb o’ houses called Napier Terrace. I was recitin’ the flap changes—” He lowered his voice as though passing on official secrets. “The changes was brand new back then. Your flight leader’ll fill you in. I was number five in the flight and it were one, two, three, four, five, six—a flap on me own number, see—then two, one, four, three, six, five—up flap—then two, four, one . . . or was that two, one, five—bugger it. Been so long I forget. Anyway, I was recitin’ the changes out loud when next thing I know Jerry hits me with poison gas.”
“Sorry?” I said.
“Poison gas, lad—bug spray according’ to the tox screen they did on me in hospital. Blinds me and knocked me colder’n January lager, as we say in the RPAF. Next I know I’m in hospital. Findin’ out what happened to me upset my nat in stasis so, Billy Foster the natural man cacked out.” He held out his wings. “Company’s gift.” He lowered his wings. “Had to get specs, though, ’cause the poison fried me corneas. Can’t see much with ’em, but can’t see a bleedin’ thing without.”
When Staff Foster marched off to abrade some trainee’s ego, I turned to Shad. “We need to know if the scenes of crime officers ever found Kumar’s pigeon bio, exactly where the SOCOs found those feathers, and what they did with them. We also need a detailed map of the squadron patrol areas in Exeter. I’m very curious who was living in Napier Terrace eight years ago when Staff Foster caught it.”
Shad’s pigeon suit looked at me for a beat then nodded. “Fitness reports and other pigeon injuries and deaths?”
“Absolutely. Get details, location, and date of each incident. We need police reports and lists of every employee, guest, and residence in each area as well as traffic and private surveillance video archives. Stasis bed consequences, too.”
“You think our boy has been busy before?”
“Seems likely.”
