DAY 2,236
Studies in Detective Fiction
Jenny
"Oi, oi, look who's finally dragged her lazy arse out of bed."
"Alright, leave it out, it's my day off, mate," Jenny countered one of the two laughing constables standing at either side of the front doors of an old and now-derelict town house in a dodgy London slum. They were wearing plastic ponchos and coverings over their fluorescent jackets to protect from the rain, while Jenny carried an umbrella. It was battering against the whole city, and there had been warnings on the news about flooding because the drains were beginning to overflow. Three solid days of rainstorms.
"I don't think I'd leave bed if I had Young's girlfriend, Phil," the second constable, Jenkins, said.
"And I'm giving up an entire weekend of intimacy with her to be here, so you should be grateful," Jenny told the pair of them. Behind her were police cars with no sirens but flashing lights, the entire crime scene cordoned off. In her hand not holding her umbrella she was precariously balancing seven paper cups of tea, cardboard trays of four stacked one on top of the other. She had already given two of them away to another pair of constables standing at the edge of the crime scene down the road trying to keep the press at bay.
"Don't know how you can stand it," Phil laughed.
"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I come bearing gifts. Take one each, no more, I need to satiate Turner. Who's on forensics?"
"McHale," Jenkins answered, "Elliott's already in there giving him the third degree."
"Giving McHale the third degree?" Jenny was surprised.
"Everyone," Phil said, "If anyone needs one of those teas, it's him. Go on, Jenny. Turner'll kill you if you're any later."
"I only got called in twenty minutes ago!" Jenny protested. They laughed and she brushed past them, into a house full of white-suited forensics experts combing the place. One of them pointed her upstairs, and she left her umbrella opened and upturned by the front door because it was impossible to put it away one-handed. This was her Saturday morning, her Saturday off, which she had taken off to spend with Clara. She wasn't even on call – but so was the modern world.
She trudged up the stairs of the slum, full of so much junk and damp it was clearly being used as a squat, and found Detective Inspector James Elliott standing over a corpse, accompanied by Chief Inspector Sonja Turner and Head of Forensics Joshua McHale. It was a very bleak room, with peeling wallpaper showing the bare, mildew-covered wood, the ceiling falling apart and a few scattered syringes and hot knives in the dirty corners. It was a ghastly place, and the building was situated right on the edge of an industrial estate with a very bad reputation for sex trafficking. The heavy rain thundered down onto the rooftop, and was leaking steadily through a gap above one of the old windows, spreading mould to all the surfaces and making a murky puddle on the floor underneath the glass pane.
"Oh, she finally shows her ugly face," quipped Turner, then she saw the teas Jenny had brought, "I'll have one of those." Jenny handed them out and then dumped the cardboard trays on the windowsill nearby, where they were going to get soaked by the rain just like everything else in there. It was humid and it stank of the substances growing inside the walls.
"I could have refused to come," said Jenny, "It's my annual leave. I have a right to it."
"And this bloke had a right to live until somebody snuffed him out."
"Nobody 'snuffed him out' if it's another OD," Jenny argued, and looking at the state of the body it certainly was. Turner gave her a dark look, a look which reiterated all of the case details of the recent spate of mystery overdoses, those being that nobody knew how the drug was being consumed, what it was made of, or where it came from. They didn't know anything except that the introduction of a toxic chemical element had caused, in the last month, a slew of grisly deaths in the areas of the city inhabited primarily by junkies and other vagrants.
"I keep saying we're not in vice," Elliott grumbled, "This isn't our area."
"Your area is whatever I say it is," Turner snapped, "You and your bullshit department."
"Gets you more funding," Jenny grinned. Turner was joking. She knew they were useful. And the stuff about the extra funding was true. Elliott was grimacing and looking at his feet. "What's going on, then? Why have we been brought onto this? I'm not familiar with the case details."
"They're very unusual details to say the least," began McHale through his mask. He was barely recognisable, identical to all the other CSIs skulking around. Probably looking for drugs. "Have a look at this," he said, crouching down next to the body. He lifted up the arm and something very grotesque happened: everything underneath the skin slid down. It was like moving around a plastic bag full of water, squishy and slushy. The arm would have lost all form if not for the fact the skeleton was intact, but now the skin sagged down the fingers and sank in a bloated lump at the elbow. She got the impression that if the skin were broken, all manner of organ-coloured fluid would leak out.
"You see?" said Turner, "It's your area."
"It does look like that," Jenny admitted, "It's a drug doing this?"
"Best we can tell," Josh stood back up. Jenny nudged Elliott. He was in a foul mood - she could see now what Phil and Jenkins meant about him going off at McHale.
"Any suggestions?" she prompted him, "You got here before I did."
"I'd like to know where I can find this miracle drug," he muttered. Turner scoffed.
"Don't be so pathetic." Jenny realised what had happened.
"Has she dumped you again?" she asked him. He didn't answer, which meant that yes, he'd been dumped. Again. By Sally Sparrow. She shook her head. "Right, whatever. How many deaths have there been, exactly?"
"This is the seventh, in three weeks," said Turner.
"Have any of them been ID'd?"
"Four, not including this one. It's hard to get a match because of the disfigurements," McHale said, "Keegan and Holloway were working it before, you need to get the case files from them, but they've come up short."
"Obviously," said Jenny, "Otherwise we'd still be responding to UFO sightings and liaising with the HCC whenever someone thinks they've found a Manifest." It was 2025, the Manifest Crisis was still in full-swing and would be for another four years. Jenny hated having to work with the Hazard Control Corps, and usually palmed off those tasks on Elliott when he was feeling himself.
"The four we've identified are all known-junkies. They have minor records and a long history of substance abuse and have taken more or less every drug under the sun," McHale said, "But the autopsies have turned up nothing, and Chambers was nearly sick. Can you imagine? Pathologist for thirty years and this is what breaks him. Kinsey took over after the first one."
"Where are the bodies now?" Jenny said, "Have any of them been buried?"
"Haven't been released to the families, all in storage in the mortuary," Turner said, "Under the guise of a potential biohazard-"
"When really it's because you have no idea how any of them died?" Jenny suggested.
"That's where you come in. We don't want this becoming an epidemic, it could be the new Meow Meow, but with even worse consequences," Turner said, "You're taking point on this, Young. Taking over from Holloway as the new officer in charge"
"Alright, brilliant – so. I want this body bagged and tagged and taken to the morgue, then one of the PCs to order Kinsey to get all the other bodies out of storage and have them ready for Cohen. Warn him I'm calling her in. We need her on this, if he's stumped. Then I want all the case files from Keegan and Holloway on my desk by the time James and I get back from early lunch."
"I don't want any lunch," Elliott muttered.
"No lunch then," said Turner.
"If you want Jimmy at his best then we're going to lunch to talk about his feelings, alright?" Jenny said, "Remembering that you've dragged me away from what was promised to be a very romantic weekend with my girlfriend for these overdoses – which are barely even priority."
"Ma'am?" Jenkins interrupted. He had come in from outside and appeared in the doorway of the upstairs room, addressing Turner. "Emergency. Bomb scare at Woodgrove School. Looks like it might be genuine."
"Today of all days…" Turner grumbled, "Right, I want Keegan and Holloway on it now their other primo assignment has been handed over. They're on point. You're driving me down there, Phil's going back to the station and putting all the OD files on Young's desk and then he can do a tea and coffee run to Woodgrove. Bomb scares always overrun." Then she turned to McHale as she headed out, "You heard what Young said. Bag and tag, talk to Kinsey when you deliver the body. Tell him to make himself scarce for Dr Death."
"You don't want us to help with the bomb scare?"
"Bomb scares aren't unexplained phenomenon. Stay in your lane, detective," Turner called to Jenny as she left, following Jenkins out of the squat. McHale left after her to go fetch a body bag, leaving Jenny alone with James Elliott. Two years ago, he had quit Undercoll to re-join the force, the Metropolitan Police wanting a department dedicated to the unexplained because the volume of bizarre cases had steadily been increasing for decades. Sally Sparrow often joked about it being Scotland Yard's answer to The X-Files.
"I'm not hungry," he mumbled.
"Nope. You're my partner in crime, I need you at your best, and we need to kill time until Cohen can get to the morgue," Jenny said. Dr Cohen still worked for Undercoll, but often consulted for them on some of their weirder cases. Jenny had never appreciated her medical genius until she had started working for the police, which was Clara's suggestion, as an alternative to going back to the military. She enjoyed the police much more than the army, that was for sure – she was actually doing good. "We're going to the café round the corner from the station, end of story. I'm paying, you're driving. Come on."
James said he didn't want any food, but once Jenny ordered herself a lunch of two eggs, ham and chips, he couldn't resist the smell and got up and ordered himself the exact same thing, only with one portion of chips instead of two like her. She did love chips. Before that point, he had been sitting quietly in the corner of the greasy spoon café staring into a cup of black coffee and sometimes letting his eyes wander to the fry cook, who was in his early twenties and very easy on the eyes, Jenny had to admit, if a bit short. The place had an odour of fried meat coupled with disinfectant and coffee, which was a queer but now familiar smell; that café was one of their regular haunts. She had never thought, six years ago when she had met all the new key players in her life, that James Elliott would become someone she confided everything in. But so was the way with police work, and she liked to think it was reciprocal.
"What happened, then? What did she do this time?" Jenny asked. She never knew whether to take Sally's side or James's side when it came to their spats, but often she got the story from James and Clara got the story from Sally, so discussing their affairs sometimes made things strained between them. She didn't like James and Sally's messy relationship affecting her own.
"I don't know. I asked to clean up her stuff a bit and she went loopy. I slept in my car last night." She got the feeling that this was not remotely the full story.
"You didn't have to do that, you could have called me – we live in a hotel, there's a lot of rooms."
"Not if she shows up there to talk to Clara."
"Erm, if she's the one who still has a place to sleep then Clara can go there if she's that desperate to gossip," Jenny said. In the last six years, her opinion of Sally Sparrow's character had deteriorated. It was unfortunate, but often the way. It was perhaps something to do with the fact that Clara still drooled over her quite obviously. In fact, she barely even tried to hide it. It wasn't that Jenny disliked her, she just disliked the way she treated James Elliott, who had never wronged her but still couldn't do anything right. It was a stormy relationship and they had been broken up for a solid eighteen months before this most recent attempt to get back together, which had funnily enough been Sally's idea. Esther was quite involved in helping the Manifests and Sarah-Jane's gang, and hadn't been too involved in Sally's affairs for a while. This was probably why she was going off-the-rails a little, she lacked Esther's positive influence and didn't have enough respect for Elliott for him to have the same affect. Jenny would actually encourage him to go have some fling with the fry chef behind the counter, if they weren't on a tight schedule and technically en route to Kinsey's morgue.
"I don't want to upset her by her seeing me."
"You're too good for her! I swear you are. Why do you put up with this? All she does is mess you about. You're like me and Jack."
"That was a long time ago."
"Yeah, because we knew when to call it quits."
"And neither of us have cheated," he pointed out, which cut quite deep, but was true. She and Jack had developed a nasty habit of cheating on each other. But that was all old news, very old news. Jenny dipped a large wedge of ham into her egg and stabbed a chip on the end of her fork as well, getting all the flavours of her lunch mixed up gloriously together. She stabbed another load of chips, and caught James frowning at her, puzzling.
"What?"
"What's the matter with you?"
"Got called away from my romantic weekend," she said.
"No, there's something else. You're never normally like this when you get called in, especially not for something so weird," he said. He was more intuitive than anyone ever gave him credit for. Intuitive enough to seduce Sally Sparrow multiple times. "And you're usually a bit more diplomatic when I tell you about my fights with Sally. You tell me to 'see it from her point of view.'"
"It's nothing. It's just Clara."
"What about her? It's not this, is it? You're not arguing because of me and Sally again, are you?"
"I didn't even know about it until I saw you today. No. She's just been acting funny."
"Hasn't she got a lot on? You've just decided to open that place for actual business, right?"
"I suppose. It's not really my thing, it's Clara and Nios, it's like their project. But she's just… been off. Vacant. And jumpy. And she asked me to take this weekend off but then she was being really odd, especially this morning – clingy. It's like she's trying to make up for something."
"Maybe she is. Sally always gets really affectionate in the few days before we have a fight. She got me a pack of artisanal beers she hates last weekend. It's so she can have ammo, you know? She does something thoughtful then uses me not knowing what she's thinking to scream at me. And say I never do anything because I'm 'unromantic.'"
"She wanted us to eat breakfast together this morning…"
"Don't even try to work out what they're thinking. It's such a waste of time. This is what's better about men, they're simpler. You know where you stand." He was looking at the fry cook again, who was flipping a burger.
"Yeah…" Jenny said thoughtfully, only half listening to what he was saying. She was thinking about Clara and her unusual behaviour, eating her chips. The cook came over to deliver Elliott his food, and Elliott flashed his best smile. "But it's been six years."
"People get bored," he said, but he was talking to the cook, "Really bored, sometimes." Was Clara getting bored?
Jenny's phone buzzed. When she took it out she saw it was a text message from Dr Cohen saying she was in the morgue and where were they.
"We've got to go," she said. She'd nearly finished.
"What? I only just got my food," Elliott complained.
"Take it with you," said the chef.
"What about the plate?" Elliott asked him. He shrugged.
"You'll have to bring it back later, I suppose." Then he smirked and left to go check on his burgers, Elliott watching him.
"You're unbelievable, she only dumped you yesterday," Jenny said disapprovingly, getting up and picking up her coat and her umbrella, "Now pick your jaw up off the floor and come on. We've got work to do."