Studies in Detective Fiction IV

Jenny

"This is a nasty one here," Elliott said, eating a sandwich and slouching in the car. Jenny had the radio in her hand and was waiting for the call from Turner for the raid to start, but this was one of the differences she noticed with the army and the police. In the Alliance, she would have led the charge from the front, she wouldn't send her men into fire blindly. But in the police, she had to hang back while the armed SWAT officers did their part, which had been a hard thing to get used to; but then, she was only armed with her fists and a baton. James carried on eating his sandwich, trying not to get dressing on his fashionable and very tight jeans, reading through the police file for the Aurora Acres Home for the Elderly on the car's in-built police computer. They had the grubby building in sight and were waiting for the rest of Turner's subordinates to arrive – it had the potential to be the biggest bust of the year.

"Oh yeah?" she asked, watching the building, holding the radio next to her face with her finger on the button, ready to go.

"Closed down fifteen years ago for gross negligence," Elliott said, "Half the staff were arrested, all the senior staff convicted, and one of them is still inside for four counts of manslaughter. It's been scheduled to be demolished for the last eight months, but no sign of anyone coming to do the deed."

"Grim," she said, "Being a drugs lab is almost an improvement."

"All units be advised, SWAT vans incoming from the north-east and south-west," said Keegan over the radio; he was in the control van.

"What does that give us? Thirty seconds?" James asked.

"Twenty, put your sandwich away, get your stick out," Jenny ordered him.

"You sound like my ex-girlfriend."

"Accepted it then, have you? A whole day and you've moved on."

"I'm looking for something on the rebound; if Clara finishes with you, what's say we find a dark corner in the care home over there?" he smirked. Jenny narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm joking."

"Is this why she dumped you?" she asked. He scowled while he wrapped his sandwich back up. "Do you think she's going to finish with me?"

"I think those are our boys," he said, spotting a huge, dark blue van coming their way and breaking the speed limit. It veered to their left the same time an identical one came from the opposite direction, followed from behind by more response vehicles which didn't have their sirens on, lest they alert Needles Phelps to their presence. They all came barrelling to their position and stopped on the dead grass in front of the building, then Turner came over the radio shouting the order for the raid to begin.

"GO! GO! GO!" The back doors of the vans were kicked down and two-dozen armed Special Weapons and Tactics officers with armour and helmets came running out to break in. Elliott left his sandwich on the dashboard and wiped his hands on the leather car seats despite Jenny telling him not to because the car didn't belong to them, it belonged to the Met. They got out the same time Turner and Holloway appeared from one of the other response cars, with Turner listening to the chaos of the SWAT teams on the radio. From outside, they heard gunshots.

"You succeeded where we failed, then?" Holloway looked between them. "I don't want you leaving my name out of the report – we warmed this one up for you."

"Ordered some x-rays, roughed up a drug dealer – I'm sure you boys could have managed all that," Jenny said. But he was grinning, and he shook both of their hands. They all worked for Turner, and any victories they achieved themselves automatically became victories for her and therefore victories for the entire team. Really, though, Jenny thought that most, if not all, of the credit belonged to James Elliott. She hadn't done much of the deducing herself at all. He probably could have handled the whole thing himself and she could have stayed at home. "It was mainly Elliott, so direct all of your praise or jealousy in his general direction."

"I'll put him to the top of my hit list," Holloway quipped.

"All PCs to the front doors, we need to be meeting them on their way out and getting them under arrest. Keegan, bring the van round," Turner said into the radio.

"Be right there, ma'am," said Keegan.

"Who was it who fed you this information?" Turner asked Jenny and Elliott.

"Ricky Collins, known drug dealer, bad habit of snitching. We had leverage over him when we identified more of the victims and connected them to each other – he felt sad about this 'White Doom' killing them," Elliott interrupted, desperate to shine now Jenny had spoken highly of him. Who knew, maybe he would get that promotion he was angling for? She'd be happy for him, and she thought he deserved it.

"A commendation might be in order for our Welsh boy here," said Turner, "We'll see what kind of haul we pull in – oh, and here he is! The man of the hour! We've been looking for you for a long time, Harry." Harry 'Needles' Phelps was being dragged out of the building effing and blinding, spit flying from his mouth with as much volume as the swear words, trying to fight his way out of the hands of two SWAT officers.

"You piece of shit pig cunt!" he screamed at Turner, who was completely unfazed.

"Nice to see you too," she said.

"You'll never put me away, you fat bitch."

"Resorting to petty insults? I might cry," she said, "I think we've got a pretty good chance of getting you behind bars. One of you lot stop idling and take this low-life away, get him out of my sight."

"I'll do it," Holloway jumped at the opportunity, "Can't have Elliott taking all the glory – I'm putting Needles Phelps on my arrest record." He smirked at them both, then went to force a pair of handcuffs on Phelps. After he was grabbed, there was a steady trickle of drug dealers and junkies all being forced out by constables and other officers, some trying to escape by climbing out of windows and making a run for it. "Harry Phelps, I'm placing you under arrest. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

"Come on, you two. Let's see what we've won," said Turner, heading towards the care home. Jenny and Elliott followed hastily, with Elliott looking like all his Christmases had come at once. But Jenny was still thinking obsessively about Clara, in spite of their enormous victory, and the fact she still hadn't answered her texts. She had even tried calling when they had been in the car on their way over, twice, and the call had been declined. What was going on? She was getting desperate.

"Needles didn't keep a very clean shop, did he?" Elliott commented. All the windows were barricaded and the air was full of smoke, steam and dust, "Didn't he take any pride in his work?"

"Smells like a meth lab in here – I thought Needles only works with heroin?" Turner said.

"Maybe he was in the middle of expanding?" Elliott suggested. Turner took her radio back out.

"Keegan, can I get an ETA on the K-9 unit?"

"K-9 unit, ma'am?"

"Yes, the K-9 unit, I want the best sniffer dogs in the country down here."

"You didn't request any-"

"This is the biggest bust of the decade! Of course I want a bloody K-9 unit! Get on it, now. And I want McHale notified as well, get forensics over, we've nearly cleaned out all the wildlife," Turner said as another drugs fiend was dragged past them by a constable. "Hold on a minute," she stopped the PC to speak to Needles' lackey, "Point us to the White Doom and we might offer you a healthy plea bargain."

"In a floor safe in the head office, only Needles knows the combination," he said. Turner nodded and let the constable take him away.

"That's just what we need, a floor safe," she complained.

"Don't worry, I've got a special knack for breaking into safes," Jenny said, and Turner raised her eyebrows at her, "What?"

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." It wasn't hard to find the main office, nor to find the floor safe, because the carpet had been ripped up at one point in time leaving it there for all to see. It was no small safe, either; Jenny wondered if had been dragged there and installed by Needles rather than belonging to the people who used to run the care home. "Go on then, Young. Show us your party trick."

"It's an analogue safe, this'll be easy," she said, pulling a pair of latex gloves out of her pocket so that she didn't contaminate the crime scene with her fingerprints. No electronic lock, no biometrics, just a wheel. She didn't even need to use her screwdriver. It took her an entire forty-three seconds to crack the twelve-digit combination – which was actually very shabby. She used to be able to break a lock like that in fifteen, back when she still worked for the Blacklight Society and was thieving professionally. She opened the heavy door and pulled out a very strange-looking metal container which had been forced open using a blowtorch. "Here we go…" she opened it herself and found inside a whole load of unusual canisters. She stood back up to show it to Elliott and Turner.

"Is that our White Doom?"

"Elliott calls it 'One Hit Wonder' – I think that's way better," Jenny said.

"It is, but I'm not paying him to be witty," Turner commented, "What is this stuff? I don't recognise the language."

"As best I can tell, it translates to Breathe-EZ. But 'easy' is spelled 'E-Z' to sound friendly," Jenny said, examining it. When she glanced at the list of ingredients she recognised the main two that Helix had said were the main elements, "Ah-ha, look right there. It says Phytolomide Neotracin, among other things." She held it out to them.

"Yeah, that's not in English," said Elliott, "Or any language I've ever seen."

"Nor me," Turner said.

"It's another talent I have," Jenny said, "I'll get an official translation, put in a request with Undercoll. It's alien. I don't know the species, but as far as I can tell it's the extra-terrestrial equivalent of an inhaler. This is your 'White Doom.'" She put the box down on the desk for it to be bagged up and taken back to the station by forensics when they combed the place. "I'll bet there isn't any more of it. My dad once told me a story about an alien ambulance that crashed in London in 1941 and released all these tiny robots into the air, and all they did was heal people, but they learnt wrong and went rogue and before long there were a bunch of gas mask zombies running around."

"She's a weirdo, but by god is she worth every penny," Turner said approvingly. The Met had no idea that she was an alien herself. "Now then. Didn't you have a romantic weekend planned? Best get back to it. You can file your report on your next shift, leave it for now. It's going to take the rest of us all weekend to catalogue the evidence in here and process the suspects."

"Thank you, ma'am," Jenny said, ducking out of the place at the first opportunity. Elliott smiled at her and gave her a small wave of goodbye, because he wasn't taking the rest of the day off and was going to have to help clear out the crime scene. When she was back out in the street she pulled off her gloves and took out her phone right away, to make another call to Clara. It was only the early afternoon, she'd only been gone half the day, if that. She walked back to the car listening to the dial tone, and just when she was expecting the call to get rejected again, Clara actually picked up. "Clara? Oh my god!"

"What? What's the matter?" Clara asked.

"Nothing – I mean – I just-"

"You've called me six times today – I'm kind of busy, Jen," said Clara.

"Busy how? I thought you were staying in."

"Something came up."

"Something like what?"

"Just something – listen, is this important?" Jenny was hurt.

"It's just – we've carried out a major drug bust and solved this case, it was this alien medicine, see, and-"

"Yeah, that's brilliant, I'm proud of you, can you tell me about it later, yeah? I'm really in the middle of some-" Clara stopped talking and Jenny could have sworn she heard someone talking to her, someone female who was not Nios. "Just a second," Clara's muffled voice called to them. She had covered the microphone. "Jenny, I'm sorry-"

"I've got the rest of the day off now, and tomorrow, all my leave reinstated. Where are you? I can drive over, and-"

"You can't," Clara said quickly.

"Why not? Where are you?"

"Why should it matter where I am?"

"I-"

"I'm sorry, lovely – I really am. I'll talk to you later, okay? We've got a lot to talk about. We'll go out for dinner. I'll see you soon. I love you," and she had hung up before Jenny could say it back. That was the frostiest conversation she had ever had with Clara to the best of her recollection, and it stung her. And they had 'a lot to talk about'? Since when did they have a lot to talk about? A lot to talk about like how Sally and James had a lot to talk about? What did that mean?

Desperately, Jenny dialled a different number, her own landline, praying that Nios, at least, was still in and could shed some light on all this. If she was going to be broken up with, or worse, she wanted to know. At least Nios was reliable enough to answer the phone.

"Hello?" she said.

"Ni – it's me."

"Oh, hi. Aren't you at work?"

"No, I've just knocked off, solved some mysterious deaths, carried out the biggest drug raid in a decade – listen, can you tell me where Clara is?"

"Uh…"

"Nios."

"Not really."

"But you know where she is?"

"Well…"

"Don't you lie to me, or I swear I'll go back to the police morgue and start putting the screws to Hayley. She's there trying to ID bodies for us and I need to talk to her anyway to get her to cross-check an alien language for me," Jenny threatened.

"Fine! I'll tell you. But don't go mental, you sound mental right now."

"I'm not remotely mental. I've never been less-mental."

"That's exactly what you'd say if you were mental."

"Tell me, or I swear I'll-"

"She's taken your spaceship. She's gone to 1817, to Winchester. July the 12th. She's only visiting someone, she'll be back for-"

"Winchester? 1817? What could she want in… oh no. She is not-" Jenny hung up the phone and bit her lip to suppress her urge to swear. She never swore, but this was what she had been reduced to. By Clara. Clara Ravenwood, the two-timing… She would have thought she learned after everything that happened with Jack.

She scrolled through her contact list for a third time and finally resorted to calling one more number, in lieu of having her own spaceship now that it had been so heinously stolen by the love of her life: Jenny called her father.

"Hello!? Is anybody in!?" she hammered her fist on the wooden door of a townhouse, which was both large yet modest, despite the fact its façade was painted a rather sickening shade of pus-yellow. It was an insufferably hot summer's day, and she was not dressed for that weather at all and so was suffering outside. People in the street kept looking at her and her strange clothes and behaviour, them with their lacy dresses and their parasols, gossiping. She glared at them, and the women hurried along. One coach driver cast a worried eye over her and then picked up his reigns and took his carriage a way down the street so that he didn't have to be near her. She kept knocking on the door, desperate for somebody to answer before she had to try and break in through one of the open windows.

She was about to beat her fist on it one final time when it was opened by a middle-aged woman, who looked furious about the entire situation.

"What possible reason could a stranger have for making such an offensive disturbance?" she demanded, but she demanded it surprisingly politely. She wouldn't want to make a scene – nobody ever wanted to make a scene, when more often than not making a scene was the best way to get things done.

"Don't think you can pull the wool over my eyes," Jenny said, "I know what you're doing, Austen. Getting your claws into Clara, into my Clara, making her-"

"Get in here," the woman hissed, going red. Was she embarrassed? Embarrassed because she had been caught out? She dragged Jenny into the house and closed the door behind her then, just as Jenny was feeling especially triumphant about wheedling her way inside without having to break anything, she slapped her very hard around the face. Jenny was shocked, and clutched her burning cheek. "Who do you think you are? You haven't got the remotest sense what you're talking about, miss."

"What the devil is going on, Cassandra? You remember the doctor said to keep the noise to a minimum. This degree of stress is bad for her," a tall man said, coming out of a different room with a book in his hand. Jenny realised that the women who had slapped her was, in fact, not Jane Austen, and was her sister. "Who's she?"

"She says she's here for Clara," Cassandra said.

"Then by god, let her upstairs. I can't think with all this noise. Just make sure she knows to whisper."

"But Jane is so weak now, Henry-" He waved her away and returned to whence he had come from, and Cassandra scowled at his seeming lack of concern. Jenny didn't wait for Cassandra to allow her upstairs, she marched upstairs of her own accord, though she did in fact tiptoe just in case the upstairs residents had not yet noticed her arrival – knowing Clara the way she did, it wouldn't surprise her.

She made out the sounds of whispers when she reached the landing, Cassandra not bothering to shout after her, and strained her ears to listen, though she failed to make out any words clearly. Jenny identified the room they were coming from and slinked ever-closer, reaching out a hand for the doorknob. She heard a sound like a fumble on the other side of the wood, and took that opportunity to fling it open with all the vivacity she could muster, and what she saw made both of her hearts stop dead.

There was Jane Austen, spindly and sickly, wrapped up in bed with a flannel on her forehead, a chair dragged right up to her bedside, a manuscript on the table. And there, too, was Clara, her Clara, whom she had only seen a handful of hours ago. But Clara was on the floor, she was on one knee, right in front of the chair and at Jane Austen's side, and in her hand, she was holding something which still managed to shine despite the fact the curtains were almost entirely drawn and the room was filled with shadows. There was no doubt about it, Clara Ravenwood was holding a diamond ring, and she met Jenny's eyes with a look of fear, and took in the whole scene.

"Jenny!" she exclaimed, looking at Jane, looking at the ring, then looking at Jenny, "…Shit."