Silence on Second Street Read online

  Silence on Second Street

  A Science Fiction Short Story

  by Andrew Knighton

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © Andrew Knighton 2015

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  CONTENTS

  Silence on Second Street

  About the Author

  Dedication and Thanks

  SILENCE ON SECOND STREET

  Holden Flynn watched the city bounce by through the jeep’s wire-meshed windows, as he stroked the bare skin where his wedding ring had been. It was the only skinny part of his body, not a thing he was used to.

  It didn’t look like the city had adjusted well to change either. Gun emplacements sat empty on street corners; windowless ruins stared down like dead-eyed strangers; streets were smeared with soot and the bear-print marks of mortar blasts. Greykirk had probably lived up to its name before the invasion. Now it might as well be Ghostkirk.

  ‘Nearly there, sir.’ The driver’s face was placid, for all of his breakneck speed.

  Flynn wasn’t sure he liked that ‘sir’. Sure, having an equivalent military rank meant people knew where he stood in this mess. But the need for it was a reminder of where he was - an exile on another planet, ‘a man on his last chance’ as Superintendent Culver had said.

  'You sure I ain’t got time to go change?’ He looked down at his crumpled suit, felt the empty place where his holster should be.

  ‘No, sir.’ The driver actually laughed. ‘Colonel was very clear. Minute you made planetfall, murders are all yours. Least ‘til you run out of hours in the day, or fuck up so bad there ain’t no ignoring it.’ There was an awkward silence as the driver realised he was swearing at a superior. ‘Pardon by language, sir.’

  ‘Shit son, I done far worse.’ Resigned to his fate, Flynn lit a cigarette as they ground to a halt. ‘Let’s go look at this crime scene.’

  There was silence on Second Street as Holden stepped out of the jeep. Beat cops in blue-died military cast-offs glanced back and forth between him and the building with the hazard tape. Soldiers scanned the cops and the rest of the street, cautious of getting shot at, curious about their new colleagues. A few scattered civilians watched everything with the dead eyes of people who had seen too much. The only sound was the wind whistling through the shell of a shut-down virtuality bar across the street. Faded posters on its walls showed people wearing goggles, escaping into simulated realities far more glamorous than their own. Any reality was more glamorous than post-war Greykirk.

  ‘Detective Flynn, CID.’ Flynn flashed his badge and ducked beneath the hazard tape. It crossed his mind that they should get some proper police tape. Of course, they needed to get some proper police too.

  The Old Pretender pub had got off pretty lightly in the war. There was tape on the windows but they were intact, and its grey stone walls were untouched. The only sign of what had passed was a chunk of shrapnel wedged in the corner of the pub sign, piercing the picture of some old boy in a frilly jacket. The sort of detail a barman would keep for the sake of telling the story.

  This barman looked the kind to tell that story. Greasy and unshaven, with a face like a crow and a shirt of clashing green and red, the zit scars on his face were big enough he could pretend one came from a bomb. He leapt from his stool as Flynn came in, then sat right back down.

  Flynn waved one of the beat cops - his beat cops - over from where she was standing by the body.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘Victim was Annie Talbot, ex of the Third Greykirk Dragoons.’ The girl had the lilting local accent, so a collaborator rather than an import. For good or for bad, she chose working with the new order. ‘Now a press operator at Kennedy Compacting. She and James McCray came in off the night shift, stopped by for a pint on the way home. They had an argument and McCray shot her with an energy pistol.’

  ‘We sure it was him?’ Flynn looked without success for an ash tray, then resorted to dropping his butt in an abandoned glass.

  ‘Eight witnesses, including Mr Wallace here.’ The girl nodded to the barman.

  Flynn stepped over to the body, floorboards creaking beneath his weight. The place looked like a dive, but maybe it was the liveliest night-spot in post-war Greykirk, with its battered tables, its rows of seats, empty triangular data sockets above them on the walls, and cheap local spirits behind the bar.

  He crouched and lifted the battered tarpaulin covering Annie Talbot. She was a sweet looking kid, for all her muscles and tattoos, black hair tied back from a face that was achingly reminiscent of his own Bella. Except his daughter didn’t wear khaki tanktops or accessorise with a hole in her chest.

  ‘Shit.’ Flynn had seen all he could bear. He let the tarp drop, turned to face Wallace. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The barman’s eyes flitted nervously between Flynn and the body. The man had things to hide, but who didn’t? ‘He was shouting all kinds of mad stuff about struggle and revolt. I don’t hold with that kind of business in my pub, it only brings trouble. I was gonna break it up, but before I could he pulled out this wee pistol and shot her.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor Annie.’

  That took away a lot of the mystery. All Flynn had to do was find this McCray. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘They regulars?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye.’ Wallace seemed to consider this for a moment. ‘Well, her at least.’

  ‘And after the shot?’

  ‘Screaming, shouting, what do you expect? McCray done a runner, and none of us were gonna stop him.’

  Pulling out his notebook, Flynn scribbled down Wallace’s words while he gathered his thoughts. He should just put out an arrest bulletin for McCray, but something was bothering him. Why had McCray gunned his colleague down in a public place like that? It sounded like work was their common ground, but impulse kills were usually crimes of passion. All that stuff about struggle and revolt, that was resistance talk, but terrorists didn’t attack with their faces showing. The pieces didn’t add up, and that bothered him.

  ‘You said they came from work.’ Flynn started with what he knew. ‘That the compacting place?’

  ‘Aye, Kennedy Compacting. They make ruin bricks for the rebuilding.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Wallace. We’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Can I open the pub now?’

  Flynn paused in the doorway to look back around the crime scene. There wouldn’t have been much point in forensics even if he’d had them.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Let my people get the body out, then the place is all yours.’

  ‘Your people gonna mop up too?’

  ‘Your customers, Mr Wallace.’ Flynn said with satisfaction. ‘Your mess.’

  There didn’t seem any sense in rushing. There was no way for McCray to get out of Greykirk, not with armed checkpoints on all the roads and strict controls on the spaceport. Working in an occupied zone had its advantages. So Flynn stopped by his new apartment first, to get showered and changed out of the suit he’d travelled in. He still had no gun - he’d have to wait on the military governor to assign him one - but he felt good.

  As he approached the gates of Kennedy Compacting, all that pleasure drained away. A wrecked digger was smoking away outside the vast concrete building, and there were fresh laser blasts across the doors. A short, stout woman with a huge blonde perm and two slabs of bodyguards behind her was berating a jeep full of soldiers. If she wasn’t intimidated by the guys with guns then she certainly wasn’t impressed with Flynn.

  ‘And where’ve you been, laddie?’ she asked when he showed her his badge.

  ‘Pardon me?’ Flynn hated this sort
of thing. The angry ones, the crying ones, the ones who fussed and screamed.

  ‘They say you’ve been onto this eejit for hours.’ She waved a heavily ringed hand at the soldiers, who grinned smugly at Flynn. ‘So how’d he come round here, waving his stupid wee gun about and putting the fright up my boys?’

  ‘You mean McCray?’ Flynn lit a cigarette and offered her the packet. She hesitated for a moment and then took one, leaning forward to use Flynn’s lighter.

  ‘Listen here, Mr Detective.’ She seemed a lot calmer with a cigarette in her hand, calculating even, looking up at him with beady eyes. She tapped the half-melted side of the digger. ‘I’m blaming this on your slow going. And I’ll be telling your bosses that. Never let it be said that Cheryl Kennedy lacks friends in high places. I’m a survivor, I am.’

  Flynn could believe it. Between the grey at the roots of her hair and the scars on her weathered hands, this was clearly a woman who’d lived hard, and probably seen both sides of the law. Tempting as it was, he’d better not pick a fight with her on his first day.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Kennedy.’ He pulled out his notebook and patted around his suit for a pen. ‘Perhaps you can help me catch him. What can you tell me about Mr McCray?’

  ‘Not much. He turned up regular, did the job, went down the pub. He fought in the war, but so did most of my lads.’

  ‘How about Annie Talbot?’

  ‘Same as Jimmy McCray. They knew each other during the war - he was her captain or something like that. They’d been hanging out a lot lately. Could have just been drinking pals, but it seemed like something more, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘You think they were boyfriend and girlfriend?’

  ‘More like…’

  ‘Fuck buddies?’

  ‘Aye, that about covers it.’

  Flynn made a note. A lover’s tiff gave him another line of enquiry, though it didn’t quite fit with the things McCray shouted.

  ‘What about the resistance?’ he asked. ‘You think either of them was into that shit?’

  ‘Direct, aren’t you?’ She shook her head. ‘If there was a resistance, and your government says there isn’t, then I’d steer clear of it.’ A wave of her hand took in her thriving business and the soldiers now drinking tea by the front door. ‘But no, I doubt it’s that. They were neither of them very political, Talbot and McCray. The sort who signed up to defend their homes, not your patriotic types.’

  Flynn frowned. Maybe it was just this place, but he’d liked the resistance angle. Wasn’t that what people fought for in a war zone, even one that was settling down?

  ‘You got an address for McCray?’ he asked.

  Kennedy only hesitated for a moment, but it was there. And like that, Flynn knew he was being played.

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Just give me a minute.’

  Followed by her guards, she disappeared into the building.

  Flynn was not surprised when, twenty minutes later, Superintendent Culver called to ball him out about harassing Kennedy.

  ‘You wanna lose your badge as well as your dignity?’ Culver bellowed. ‘Keep harassing friendly businesses. You want to save your joke of a career? Find this killer, and find him fast. ‘Cause all it takes is one more fuck-up and you’re gone.’

  McCray’s apartment was a depressing heap, the walls stained with mildew and smoke, every surface littered with empty packets and cans. Flies buzzed around a half-eaten takeaway behind the sofa.

  Flynn rubbed his bare ring finger. This was probably what Thelma thought he’d come to without her. Well fuck Thelma and fuck Superintendent Culver. He’d show them all.

  Starting in the bedroom, Flynn rummaged through the filth. A casually discarded porn mag and a dusty pack of condoms in the dresser put paid to the murder as a lovers’ tiff - McCray wasn’t getting laid. The stray data cables strewn among the rubbish were harder to explain. A lot of flashy information tech came through Greykirk, that was what made it worth fighting for. But half that stuff was banned by the governor for risking brain damage or being useful to rebels, and what remained was just remnants - empty sockets in the Old Pretender, neon signs for low-rent porn bars. Porn was always the second thing people did in virtuality, right after playing war. And these people had had enough war.

  In the back of the closet was a box full of cash. Mostly Landrian yen, but a roll of Yurdan dollars as well, and some pre-war Greykirk pounds. Nothing odd in most places, but no-one here had traded in yen before the war, and all above-board pay was currently in government ration stamps. It seemed James McCray had been up to no good - but what sort of no good, and for whom?

  McCray had an old-school communications port in the living room. Most mobile units had been fried by wartime EMP, and McCray didn’t seem connected enough to have got around that yet. Flynn pulled out his own coms unit and held it up to the port. Soon a list of McCray’s recent calls was running down his screen - at last something in Flynn’s favour, that around here he passed for hi-tech. Most of the calls were to Kennedy Compacting, some to Margerie McCray, presumably a relative, and a couple were to Annie Talbot. Nothing odd there.

  The door creaked open. Flynn spun around, reaching for his absent gun.

  In the doorway stood a tall, muscular man, ginger stubble bristling though burn-scarred cheeks. He stared slack-jawed at Flynn, a gun dangling limply from his hand.

  ‘What are you doing in my flat?’ he asked.

  Flynn raised his hands.

  ‘I’m here to talk about Annie,’ he said. ‘You cool with that?’

  ‘Annie…’ There was a distant look in McCray’s eyes, like a junky just reaching the limit of his fix. ‘I didn’t realise… They told me to…’

  He seemed to run out of words, so stood with his mouth hanging open, left hand rising to his head. Flynn noticed a pale, thin band near the knuckle of the ring finger. It looked like they shared at least one pain.

  ‘You divorced?’ he asked, reaching out for a human connection.

  ‘Aye,’ McCray murmured. ‘She couldn’t take my escape. Couldn’t take the way I followed my mission.’

  ‘Who gave you the mission, James?’ Flynn lowered his hands, kept his eyes on McCray while his mind furiously raced. How the fuck did he keep this guy calm? He’d had no time to run a profile on him or understand what drove the man. And what could he do if McCray lost his shit again?

  ‘Mission… Mission…’ McCray’s eyes narrowed, his mind focusing back in on the world. Raising the gun, he pointed it at Flynn. ‘You’re with them, aren’t you? Come to trap me? Come to trick me?’

  Flynn dived behind the sofa just as the gun went off. A bright blast of laser fire ignited the upholstery and charred the wall an inch above his head.

  ‘You’ll never get me!’ McCray screamed as he ran off down the corridor.

  Flynn waited to be sure he was gone, then eased himself up from behind the sofa. He might not be so fast on his feet these days, but at least his belly had given him a soft landing.

  ‘Shiiiit,’ he said, contemplating the loss of his best opportunity. The perp had been at home and talking about the crime, but Flynn had been without backup, his only weapon a coms unit.

  He looked down at his unit, ready to call this in to whoever around here cared. The list of calls was still visible on his screen, and this time something caught his eye.

  McCray worked nights. Then he drank, and then, presumably, he slept. So what was he doing calling Kennedy Compacting in the middle of the day?

  A box full of cash; strange calls; an angry, armed veteran - Flynn was starting to think he knew who ‘they’ were, and they weren’t pretty, even with the dye job.

  Cheryl Kennedy’s office looked more like an upper class club house. Down the centre of the room was a large oak table flanked by leather chairs and standing lamps. A liquor cabinet against the wall was lined with a dozen different whiskies. There were no windows, but there were three heavies in black suits, hands clasped in front of bulging jackets.
r />   If Flynn had ever doubted Kennedy’s criminal connections those doubts were gone now. No-one showed off like a gangster.

  ‘Have you found Jimmy yet?’ Kennedy passed Flynn a glass of scotch and settled down at the table. Around her neck a string of pearls glimmered in the half-light.

  ‘I’m still following some leads.’ Flynn took a sip. He was no expert, but this tasted good.

  ‘So you weren’t the one being shot at in his flat?’ Kennedy’s smile was viper thin, cold and venomous.

  ‘Nice place he’s got there.’ Flynn hid his annoyance. It seemed that word got to Kennedy fast, but there was no need to rise to her bait. He placed the box full of money on the table. ‘Not as nice a place as this would get him.’

  ‘And?’ She took a sip.

  ‘And he’s been calling your factory. Calling at odd hours.’

  ‘We work odd hours. You may not have noticed, but your boys did a lot of damage. There’s always something to rebuild.’

  ‘You pay in cash?’

  ‘That would be illegal.’

  Flynn reached into the bag he’d taken from McCray’s, and dumped a pile of data cables on the table.

  ‘You know what these are for?’ he asked.

  Kennedy leaned forward. She seemed to be genuinely examining the cables, not just gathering her thoughts. But then, she was a clever lady.

  ‘That wee triangular plug’s what we use round here for data,’ she said. ‘Stops some eejit jacking his brain into the mains.’

  ‘You know your sims.’ Flynn watched her rummage through the wires.

  ‘We’ve had a war, detective, not a dark age.’

  ‘Plenty of guns get left after wars, I bet.’

  ‘Aye, could be.’

  ‘And you seem like a lady could afford a gun, if it was for sale.’ He looked pointedly at her goons - those bulges in their jackets weren’t wallets, and he was getting sick of this evasive shit. For the ‘friendly business’ Culver wanted him to play nice with, Kennedy didn’t keep many laws.