Army of Me:Second chapter

Now

As he slowly made his way back toward consciousness, Alex became aware of a few things. Firstly, that he was not in his own bed. Secondly, that wherever he was, it was bloody cold. Thirdly, that he was naked. And finally, there were other voices, at least one of which was a woman, and 2 distinct male voices. Both men sounded like Londoners, with a rough Middle class twang to one of them. The other sounded rather more hesitant, leaping on the comments of the lead man as if he didn’t have the confidence to make any of his own. The woman’s voice sounded cold and clipped, businesslike. Alex became aware that if, as he was beginning to suspect, he was waking up after a serious drinking session, then he had possibly spent his money on an unremembered 3-way with a hard-nosed whore and 2 strangers. It was time to take a deep breath (which turned out to be a bad idea as he inhaled an exhilarating mix of stale cigarette smoke and antiseptic), open his eyes, and prepare the excuses. Longer term, it was probably also a good time to cut back on the tequila.

Alex hesitantly opened his eyes. At first he could see nothing; the lights were just too bright, and he let out an involuntary gasp as he quickly clamped his eyes shut again. That little gasp was enough to alert the woman to his awakened state, and he immediately heard her voice by his ear.

“Alex. Alex, are you awake now? Can you hear me Alex?”

The more confident sounding of the two men joined in; “Will he be able to remember anything doctor?”

“Doctor?” Alex mused to himself. Right; it’s definitely time to cut back on the tequila. Shards and fragments of the previous evening were starting to come back to him now. He’d been on a night out with Simon, Claire, Rob, and Andy and a few of the others from work. He had a dim recollection of telling his wife, Joanna, that he’d be back by midnight and that it was going to be a quiet one. Mind you, he also had a dim recollection of being hunched over a toilet in a club and feeling a meaty hand on his shoulder, being spun round, and coming face to face with a bored-looking bouncer enquiring about the provenance of the white powder arranged into 2 neat little lines on the toilet cistern.

Alex assumed he must’ve been arrested, and he thought he could recall being driven in a cramped van by 2 policemen (who, he deduced, must be the two men here now) to the station. He didn’t remember a damn thing after that though. “Presumably I’ve been arrested for drunk and disorderly too. Must’ve been a right state if they’ve had to call the doctor out. Aw Jesus, I’ve been a drunken prick again…” Alex was so busy reflecting on this that he failed to notice, as he cautiously re-opened his eyes, his total absence of hangover.

Prepared for the glare of the lights, he opened his eyes and squinted at the 3 figures gathered round him. As his eyes became accustomed to the halogen blaze, he took in some details of his surroundings. The 3 people were exactly as he had heard; a woman and 2 men. The woman was wearing a white lab coat, carrying a clipboard, wore some very expensive looking glasses, and was slim with long dark hair and, Alex noticed as she opened her mouth to say “Are you alright?” terrible teeth arranged brown and battlement-like in an otherwise kissable mouth. Standing further back from her, on either side of his…bed? Alex was dimly aware that it was more of a gurney than a bed. On either side of whatever it was stood the two policemen. Both were in plain clothes, and both had a bored expression on their faces. The one to the left was in his mid 40s, with lank brown hair, a paunch that indicated a love of cheap and plentiful food, and a roundness of face that indicated the same love of cheap and plentiful lager. He was the source of the days-old tobacco stench, and he chewed on what Alex could only hope was industrial strength mint chewing gum in what the whole room could tell was a vain effort to keep his breath fresh.

The second of the two was younger, perhaps only half the age of the first. He wore his reddish hair rather long and matched it with the faint traces of a beard that one can only imagine was the man’s pride and joy, because there was no other excuse for inflicting such a scarcity of downy fluff on one’s face in the name of having a beard. He was trying to match the other man’s gruff aloofness, though it was pretty easy to tell that, underneath that thin veneer, he was pretty excited to be here. Which worried Alex; why the hell would anyone be excited to wake a drunk and disorderly? Why was he in hospital? Had he choked, rock star-like, on his own vomit through the night? Had he provoked a fight and came out on the losing side? Had the police decided to take out a little anger and frustration on a gibbering drunk?

As Alex ran through those possibilities in his mind, he ruled them out one by one. He couldn’t have choked on vomit, because he didn’t even feel as if he had a hangover, let alone spent the early part of last night drinking a lake of cocktails. And he couldn’t have been beaten up because, sensitive eyes and the stench of someone else’s cig smoke aside, he felt physically fine. Better than ever in fact. Come to think of it, he felt in the best shape he had done for a while. But here he was in a hospital room wearing a pristine blue gown and a puzzled expression. What the hell had happened to put him in hospital?

“Alex, can you tell me what day it is?”

The doctor, now satisfied that Alex was indeed awake and could hear her perfectly well, looked at him expectantly and not unkindly. She had a pen poised over her clipboard as her eyes remained focused on Alex.

“I…well, uhh…well yesterday was Saturday 12th January so I guess today must be Sunday 13th. Look, am I in trouble here?”

As he gave the date, the doctor gave a satisfied little smile and made a little tick on her clipboard. The older of the two policemen rolled his eyes, and the younger was quick to follow him with a tutting noise. Some of the excitement dimmed from his eyes.

“What year Alex? You’ve said its Sunday 13th. What year are we in?”

This was a question that would normally have puzzled Alex. “What year are we in? Jesus, how drunk was I?” he would like to have thought. Instead that question came at about the same time that Alex realised he was not in a hospital. The room he was in was sterile, but the décor wasn’t exactly cheap hospital green and white. The look of the room was functional, yet deliberately expensive; the fittings and furniture were a chrome-and-wood mix. The gurney he was on lay parallel to a man-sized glass box which was strewn with wires and covered in display readouts. The room was windowless, and the air was recycled so he guessed they were also underground. Alex began to scan around the room looking for the confirmation that he didn’t want to find, and found it in the slow and deliberate voice of the younger policemen.

“’Ere, boss. I think he’s figured it out. Looks like ee’s shitting himself.”

The indelicate observation ended with a snorting laugh from both policemen and a look of supreme irritation from the doctor.

“Gentlemen, if you don’t mind! Awakening clients are always in a state of emotional tenderness, and he can do without crude jokes at his expense right now, so will you please be quiet!”

The doctor, or whoever she was, certainly had the bedside manner to go with the teeth. She turned back to Alex and favoured him with an open smile that he rather wished she hadn’t bothered with, and asked him the question again.

Alex answered. The policemen both sighed. The doctor’s smile remained. Under normal circumstances, this would have pleased Alex.

“Alex, do you know where you are?”

Alex looked round at all 3 of them, and reluctantly nodded.

“I think so…is this the Vault?”

The older policeman clapped his hands and exclaimed “Excellent deduction young man! Give that fella a coconut!” This time the doctor rolled her eyes, but was careful to keep her back to the policemen. She took a breath before she answered.

“Yes Alex, you’re in the UK Vault. We’ve just revived your clone, and it’s now Friday 18th April. Alex, its 15 months later than you think it is. That’s because the most recent D-NAM update that we could find dated from last January. Actually, it was the police who provided the D-NAM for us to…”

Alex received the news with a darkening expression and a tightening in his gut. There was pretty much only one reason that he’d find himself in this situation. Quietly he spoke, interrupting the doctor’s explanation.

“I’m dead, aren’t I? I mean…well, the real me.”

The doctor gave another of what she probably thought were her soothing open-mouthed smiles.

“Well, to all intents and purposes Alex, this is the real you. But yes Alex. The original you died 2 days ago. Look, this will all come as a shock to you right now; that’s perfectly normal for any revived clone. You’re bound to feel a sense of confusion and dislocation. Don’t worry; you’ll spend a couple of days here until we’ve got you adjusted back to today’s world.”

“And we will be spending a few hours finding out just why you were adjusted out of it in the first place.” The elder of the two policemen had obviously decided that it was time for him to stamp his authority onto proceedings.

Alex, still bewildered and frightened by this turn of events looked quizzically at the elder policeman. “Wh…what do you mean?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I must’ve been to a dozen of these revivals and you lot never get any less irritating, d’you know that? I mean you got murdered y’daft bastard. And me and Chris” he indicated the younger policeman, who acknowledged Alex with a mildly embarrassed nod, “are the lucky fellas who get to see if you know who and why.”

Alex shot a panicked look at the doctor. “But…look, I don’t remember what happened 2 days ago. This is…this is some kind of joke. Am I being set up here? Have those bastards at work done this? I don’t have enough money for a clone! This can’t be real…”

The last words came out mixed with the kind of laugh that, had it been anyone other than him producing it, Alex would have filed under “Mental”. Still, he gripped onto the slender hope that he was the target of that special brand of prank involving enormous emotional cruelty that had been so popular in TV shows for the last 50 years.

The elder policeman leant forward and put his face in Alex’s, who made a mental note to remind him to change his brand of chewing gum. “Don’t be so fucking stupid. This is not a game, and we’re not having a laugh. Do you see me smiling? No. Chris isn’t rolling around on the floor in a fit of mirth. Dr Wilson here isn’t mugging to some non-existent bloody camera. You died. The sooner you can deal with that, the sooner me and Chris can talk to you, and the sooner we can get the hell out of here and deal with something other than nursemaiding an open-and-shut case. Are we clear?”

Without waiting for an answer he back away and spoke to Dr Wilson. “Right, we’ll get one of your private rooms set up for interview. We’ll be ready in 10 minutes, by which time I’d like you to have the boy from Brazil here in a more lucid state.” Aware that he was now the focus of three equally quizzical stares, the policeman hesitated for a moment. “What? It was classic film night on BBC4 last night. Come on Chris.” With that, the two men left the room, leaving an irritated Dr Wilson and a bewildered Alex behind them.

“I’m sorry about that Alex. It’s not standard protocol to have anyone other than a doctor present at a revival, but as the police were the ones who provided the D-NAM they insisted. I understand that this is going to be extremely difficult for you. An unexpected death and such a long gap between D-NAM update and revival is pretty unusual these days. But we will be working with you to make sure that you’re ready to be re-introduced into your life, and it’ll be like you never went away.” Dr Wilson offered another of what she probably honestly believed were soothing open mouthed smiles.

“Now then,” she began. Alex recognised that sort of “Now then.” It was the sort of medical phrase that presaged a sensible talking to so that the patient would feel bludgeoned with the feeling that, if they didn’t get better, it was probably due to their own lack of moral fibre. They should also pay attention as there may be a test later. In return, the doctor got the chance to lord it over lesser mortals with their vast reservoirs of knowledge. “You mentioned that you weren’t able to afford a clone. That is perfectly correct. However, there was a provision in your father’s will for a secret trust containing a savings fund. This fund was put towards the purchase of a clone.” She looked up from her notes, “At this point I’m supposed to read out this” she held up a pamphlet “to explain what a secret trust is, but you’re a solicitor I believe, so would we be okay to dispense with that?”

Alex nodded his assent. It appeared that his legal training was very much intact, though the deepening tension fuelled knot forming in his stomach made a tentative suggestion that his emotional state was not all it could have been. The legal training prissily ignored such unpleasantness, and reminded Alex that a secret trust fund was a fund much like any other trust. It was run for the benefit of, well, the beneficiary. The only difference was that, aside from a document lodged with the solicitor or trustee confirming the basic details, there was nothing else to indicate its existence. No probate was involved (which, in these days of cloning technology, was a relief; probate law had gotten rather tricky when faced with the problem of sons suing their fathers for, essentially, not having had the decency to stay dead and allow them time to grieve in peace with their inheritance). And the trustee didn’t even have to notify the beneficiary. This had obviously been the case here.

“Fortunately for you Alex, the fund matured a little less than 1 week ago. The trustee transferred the money from the fund to a “J” Account 3 days ago. You really are a very lucky man Alex.” Lucky. Right. He’d been murdered and he was lucky.

Of course he was.

The gut-knot exploded. Alex snapped his head up from its post-revival loll, eyes blazing at the doctor, whose smile (thankfully) faltered and fell.

“So I’m lucky, is that correct? Tell me doctor; is that a medical definition of ‘luck’? Hm? Some definition that I’ve hitherto been unaware of, where one finds a shit in one’s drink and remarks on ones good fortune? Are you using an archaic term perhaps? Where one can consider to have truly been blessed with good fortune by the gods and shall be henceforth have shreds of ones robe torn away by pilgrims desperate to share in some of that divine favour, because you caught the fucking plague!?”

He should have left it there. Alex could always tell when he was losing his temper because legalese and volume crept into his speech patterns. But, fuck it; he’d been awake scarcely more than a few minutes and had found he had been murdered and resurrected, and was apparently missing a year of his life. He was understandably rather grumpy. And Dr Wilson was the only available target.

“This might be another day in the office to you, but call me old fashioned if I don’t consider being murdered and brought back to life the dictionary definition of ‘lucky’! I died, don’t you get that? Does that mean nothing to you? Have you given up on bothering with empathy? Is it as much trouble as brushing your teeth?! I died! I…I died.”

All of the conflicting powerful emotions that Alex had tried to use up by shouting were bubbling their way out as tears by this point. At the last word Alex spoke, his lungs decided to get in on the action by adding sobs that wracked his whole body. He bowed his head again and wept.

He had died. Someone, for whatever reason, had killed him. That he had no memory of his death was neither here nor there; someone had stolen his life from him. Literally had stolen it; he was apparently now living a year later than his last memories, and although he doubted much of any substance could happen in the space of a year, that was still one year of his life that was gone. Who knows what he and his wife had shared during that time. Had he experienced life-changing events, only to have that taken from him by the most life changing event of all? Would the world be the same?

Dr Wilson sat by his bed, though did not offer a comforting hand or soothing words as he wept. It could be that this was because she was a typical Vault doctor; as professional and efficient and compassionate as a thrown knife. Or it could be that she hadn’t appreciated Alex’s comment about her teeth. Either way though, she remained quiet for a while until the worst of Alex’s sobs had subsided.

“Alex” she began quietly, “It’s alright. It’s alright to cry; you’re experiencing PRS and Post Revival Stress affects every clone to a greater of lesser degree. This is nothing to be ashamed of, so just…just let it all out.”

Maybe she meant well, but the words sounded so stilted coming out of her mouth. Like the sort of thing she had learned by rote for this situation, and chanted as a mantra against crying patients. The lack of empathy in her words only seemed to drive Alex to a fresh bout of tears. Dr Wilson looked on awkwardly, aware that this was her patient but clearly uncomfortable in the midst of such emotion.

At this point the door was flung open to reveal the entirely unwelcome sight of the older of the two policemen.

“I said have him ready in 10 minutes. Sooner we get started, sooner we can finish and the sooner we’ll go.” Seeing Alex slumped on the bed in tears, the policeman rolled his eyes. “Oh for fu…look, doctor; is there anything you can give him to shut him up with that wailing? Me and Chris are due off in a half hour, and we ‘aven’t got a bleedin’ chance of any overtime, so…”

Dr Wilson stood. “Detective Sergeant Marsh. I think you’ll find that the Vault has been most accommodating with your demands so far. Most accommodating. Despite it being against Revival Protocol, we’ve allowed you and your colleague access to Mr Atkinson and we’re allowing you the opportunity to interview him in order to close of the case and allow you to, as you’ve repeatedly put it, ‘Get on with some real work’. However, I am NOT here to be swept aside by silly little men playing silly little games Detective Sergeant! You are a guest in our facility, and things will go at our pace.” She had moved towards DS Marsh during this, and was now face to face with him. Somewhat quieter, but with no less clipped venom, she hissed “Mr Atkinson is extremely upset; he’s going through a lot of stress which is exactly what we would expect from anyone in his situation, and I am not about to allow 2 grubby little legal journeymen make things any worse just so they can get to whatever squalid pub they like to waste their lives in. DO I make myself clear?”

The whole room jumped at the first word of the last sentence, yelled as it was at something like four times the volume of anything else she’d uttered. DS Marsh regarded her calmly. Whether she had lost her temper out of frustration at being in an emotionally charged situation that made her uncomfortable, or whether she was simply looking after the best interests of her patient, she had made it clear that it was her who was in charge of Alex’s immediate destiny. And bearing in mind their location, it looked like DS Marsh had been made undeniably aware of this too.

He looked over at the tear sodden wreck on the bed, sighed, and nodded. “Okay doctor, have it your way. I doubt he’s in the right mood anyway. Me and Chris will wait outside. Come and tell us when you’re done, and we can take him through for interview.” He paused, glanced over at Alex again, and then continued in a surprisingly soft tone “It won’t take long Mr Atkinson; 5 minutes tops, and then we’ll be out of your life and you can get back to living it, okay?” Alex looked up and through blurry vision saw Marsh standing by his bed, and didn’t see the smile he had offered. He nodded, and bowed his head in what was a rather belated effort to hide both tears and shame at his emotional state from the policeman.

“We’ll be a couple of hours here Detective Sergeant” said Dr Wilson, who had moved to the door and was gesturing for Marsh to leave as she spoke. “Alex will be ready when he’s ready, and not before.” Marsh left, and the doctor closed the door behind him.

“Sorry about that Alex. Now then, where were we?”

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As it was, Alex spent three hours with Dr Wilson. She went through the chronology of what had happened to him; the secret trust set up by his father was expanded upon. His murder was, to her knowledge, random and motiveless though the two policemen would doubtless tell him more later. His revival was put into doubt for a day as he hadn’t made any D-NAM contributions to the Vault, but their access to pretty much every database that both the company and the government use dug out his DNA swab taken during his inglorious arrest. Despite having already experienced the not altogether wonderful news of having been murdered, Alex had rather hoped that his memory of a squalid little arrest for bunging half a gram of cocaine and Harpic up his nose was as illusory as his death had turned out to be. Whilst he had began to accept the implications of his cloning, he had a harder time reconciling himself to whatever impulses had led him to almost risk his career on a weekend drugs binge.

Throughout the hours, Alex grew gradually calmer and less likely to burst into tears at subjects as diverse as the immortality of the human soul, and what kind of cereal he would be getting served during his few days of re-orientation. The former stemmed from Dr Wilson’s brief mention of The Church of the Immortal Soul, or The Immortals as they called themselves. They were regarded by damned near every faith on the planet as a fringe cult, yet Alex vaguely remembered reading something about how they had attracted members who had professed Mohammed, Moses, and Jesus Christ as their prophets. He had never really concerned himself too much with them, being as they were a cult that had started and spread with the advent of cloning. He couldn’t remember a huge amount concerning their faith, but made a mental note to pay really close attention to the re-orientation lecture on the subject. What he could remember involved less of the “Coffee mornings and biscuits” school of religion and more of the “Anyone standing in the way of God’s unstoppable Will shall find themselves dead in the name of His love” college of thinking.

Even as Dr Wilson delivered what was effectively a well delivered monologue punctuated with sobs, Alex’s mind had decided that enough was enough, and he needed to pull himself together and snap out of it! This was a way of thinking that was a gift from his mother. As he busied himself on snapping out of it he didn’t really have time to stop and think that it was his parents who were helping him survive his death and resurrection with their legacy apiece of a cloned body thanks to one and almost infinite self loathing because of the other. Of course, even if he’d had the time he wouldn’t have bothered. Alex rarely thought about his parents (and, he guessed, nothing would have really happened in a year to change that. Except for the clone of course). On the occasions that he did, he thought of a father who loved him in his fashion and a mother whom Alex hated in pretty much every other fashion. And then he started to feel like storm clouds were gathering in his brain, so he moved onto other subjects that made him feel less like dealing with the conflicting emotions in him by shouting at someone, and more like having a couple of drinks with Joanna and letting the day slide off him.

Alex asked about Joanna about 20 minutes into Dr Wilson’s mini-lecture. Thoughts of his wife had first occurred to him about 10 minutes in, but he spent the other 10 dealing with the guilt of not having thought of her immediately. Dr Wilson banished a momentary look of discomfort (which Alex took to mean that this was indeed a lecture she’d delivered many times before, and was probably on autopilot before the interruption) and explained that as his next of kin, his wife had already been informed of the revival. However, protocol dictated that they could not see one another until his reorientation was complete. Alex asked whom else had been informed of his revival, and was met with the answer that only next of kin are informed of revivals. “After all,” she explained, “what with the possibility of lawsuits from disappointed offspring, the Immortals, and the amount of money usually involved when a clone is revived,” Alex could’ve sworn she had enunciated ‘usually’ more than he’d have liked. “then it’s no surprise that our clients prefer some privacy.”

She offered another smile, natural for her but incongruous to Alex who could really have done without such a blunt assessment of the new and exciting hazards his life as a clone might face. After that, Alex offered few interruptions and allowed Dr Wilson to continue uninterrupted save for a few awkward pauses as the last of Alex’s emotional trauma was tearfully and tightly packaged away and consigned to the “Do NOT touch!” section of his psyche. By the time three hours had passed, Alex no longer felt he and his sense of what was happening to him were undergoing a minute-by-minute assault. Instead, he was simply numb. Numbness accentuated by spiky motes of anger. Someone had taken his life from him. Then he’d had a year taken from him. It was just too huge to take in, and he felt the mental defences snap into place to protect him from the impact. The numbness began to give way to calculation. “Take yourself out of the equation Alex. Find out why you were murdered. Find out what has happened in that year. You’ll not have lost a thing then, and you can deal with this once you’re ready and armed with everything you need.” It was the same cold rationality that had always insulated him from the implications of his work, and now it was keeping him safe from himself. He needed to know just what had happened, and Dr Wilson’s filled in some blanks on the events of the last year, with the promise of more to come in re-orientation. What he had almost no information on was his death, and he wasn’t going to get any of that from her.

Her talk having drawn to a close, Dr Wilson re-focused her beaming brown smile onto Alex and asked “Have you any questions Alex?” Alex composed himself, and climbed up from the gurney. He sat, legs hanging over the side of it, and looked Dr Wilson in the eye. “Yes Doctor. Could you tell me when I can talk to DS Marsh please?”

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As he sat in the cramped and bare room that VaultTec had given the police to use for getting his statement, Alex was aware of a certain atmosphere. He recalled DS Marsh making some allusion to babysitting him. He’d watched enough piss-poor cop shows on TV to know that this meant that DS Marsh and his young colleague were on what they would doubtless feel to be a rather demeaning task. Alex felt proud that, only a few hours on from being returned from the dead, his brain was already keeping him up to date on the subtext of the situation that he was in. Of course, his brain was helped in this by DS Marsh glowering at Alex like he was a smear of radioactive dogshit as Chris prepared his police-issue mobile phone for the taking of Alex’s statement, but nevertheless, Alex was pleased by his mental alacrity.

He attempted some small talk to try and lighten the oppressive mood within the room. “So,” Alex began, “Do you have to interview many corpses in your line of work then?” Not the most impressive opening gambit, but a one to which Chris responded eagerly. “God no! This is a first for us, innit Sarge? Midweek we’d usually be catching up on bloody paperwork. We jumped at this, didn’t we Sarge?” DS Marsh malignantly regarded Chris from his seat. “The sooner you get that fucking phone ready, the sooner we can start, and the sooner we can get back to some proper work.” Marsh flicked a glance to Alex, as if defying him to mention the contradiction between Chris’ account of how they came to be here, and his own theatrically expressed distaste for having to interview him.

Chris, chastened by his superior’s swift dismissal of his excitement, clumsily fiddled with the buttons on the phone for another half minute which was punctuated with the occasional curse and a quite spectacularly angry “For FUCK’S sake Chris!” from Marsh toward the 30 second mark. Chris meekly sat by Marsh and quietly announced “Ok Sarge, ready when you are.” Marsh nodded to Chris, who pressed a button on the small phone that sat unobtrusively on the side of the small table across which Alex faced the two policemen. A red light blinked to indicate that the audio and visual recording had begun.

“This is DS 4340 Marsh interviewing the newly revived Alexander John Atkinson. Also present is DC 7658 Smith,” Chris gave a nervous smile and a quiet hello at the mention of his name “Interview is being conducted in the offices of the London Vault, the time is now,” Marsh consulted his watch and furrowed his brow as he studied it. “Fuck me; we’ve been here nigh on 4 hours Chris! The time is now 1451 hours. Okay then Mr Atkinson. Do you know why you’re here?”

Alex almost burst out laughing. He held himself back from doing so as he realised that giggling in the face of an almost supernaturally unhappy policeman and his idiot man-child companion was possibly not the best way to get information out of them both as to what happened. Instead, he said “Is this a philosophical question Sergeant? Are you anxious to plumb my newly acquired knowledge about the afterlife? Or should I just enjoy the irony of what you’ve just said and relax?”

Then he burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it; the look on Chris’ face was too much, and Alex had always been exactly the kind of smartarse who enjoyed proving his superior intellect.

Rather than the explosion he had expected, Marsh greeted Alex’s slightly hysterical giggling fit with a long and baleful stare. Alex’s laughter died away, and Chris shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The laugh was replaced with stony silence, broken after what seemed like forever by Marsh.

“Chris, I owe you a fiver.” Chris smiled at this, and now it was Alex’s turn to look unsure. “He said you’d laugh first. I said you’d cry. Actually I said you’d wail like a mouse getting raped by an Alsatian. Shall we continue Mr Atkinson?” A suitably chastised Alex nodded.

“Okay then Mr Atkinson, I’ll repeat the question; do you know why you’re here?”

“Well…yes. I mean, I was murdered wasn’t I? A year from now. Well…not from now. From 2 days ago. Sorry; this is a bit confusing for me.”

Marsh maintained his glare. “Yes Mr Atkinson,” he spat, before lying. “I can sympathise with how difficult this all must be for you. Yes, you were murdered 2 days ago in Paki Alley.” Alex winced a little at the casual racism; both his job and his circle of friends demanded an avoidance of bluntly unpleasant racial language. The former because professionalism was required at all times when dealing with the thorny legal topics of keeping Nocts out of the country at all costs. The latter was more to do with the upper-middle class aspirations of pretty much everyone he know.

Marsh noted the wince and continued. “We’ve been able to piece together your movements over the hours leading up to your murder. It seems you left the office in a somewhat downcast mood, although our witness notes that this is ‘nothing special from him’. Marsh looked up from the statement he’d read from. “Probably you were so bloody miserable ‘cos of that rubbish you stuff up your nose. I hope to fucking Christ you got off that stuff this year young man, because if there’s one thing that boils my piss these days it’s watching young bloody idiots using ‘Oh, there’s no real hope for poor lowly us in the future’ as an excuse to sit around and take drugs and do bugger all with their lives.” Curiously, rather than the crescendo of righteous anger that Alex would’ve expected to accompany such a diversion, Marsh dropped his tone and spoke in a just-as-harsh but somehow more conciliatory tone.
“From the office, you proceeded to Tottenham Court Road tube station. You presumably got off at Hendon. Now, at this point most sensible people in London head home via Prothero Gardens, but not you Mr Atkinson. You took a detour through an area renowned for its lack of friendly white faces. What led you to the Alley on your way home? Stopped to buy more drugs?”

“What? No! Look, just what…” Alex was cut off by Chris. “Hey, if your memory is a year old, how d’you know that you weren’t going to buy drugs, eh?” And with that, Chris leant back with the satisfied look of a geek completing computer games on Heroic Setting and basked in the warm glow of his pertinent question. Alex’s voice began to gain in volume as he answered. “I know because that’s the same route I always walk home from work. Every day. Without fail. What time was my body found?”

Chris manfully hid his disappointment as he answered “We got a call at 1933 hours from a Mr Sanjay Singh saying that a white male had been stabbed in the street by another white male. Officers arrived on the scene at 1942 hours. Mr Singh was arrested on suspicion of your murder at 1944 hours, and forensics arrived at 2002 hours. You were identified as the deceased by your wife at 2145”

Jesus…poor Joanna had had to identify his body? He felt a burst of anguish as his imagination forcibly conjured the image of his sobbing wife seeing his broken, dead body. “So…so you’ve got the man that did it then? So…what d’you need me for? You’ve got your man; my last memories are from a year ago. What exactly am I doing here Sergeant?” Marsh, who had been watching Alex’s face throughout his exchange with Chris, leant forward to speak. “So can you confirm, Mr Atkinson that you have no memory of your final moments? You don’t have any information that could help us?”

“I…well, no. Sorry.” Alex held Marsh’s stare for a few moments, and then looked down. “Do you think he did it? The bloke they’ve arrested?” Marsh continued to stare at Alex. “So you don’t have any enemies then Mr Atkinson? You’ve not worked on a deportation that might’ve come back to bite you on the arse? Been involved in some shady dealings? Not shagged anyone’s wife have you?”

The explosion of temper that Alex had expected to happen since he walked into the room finally happened. Except that Alex had expected it to be Marsh shouting at him, not the other way around.

“Listen you jumped up fat fuck! Who the bloody the hell d’you think you are making accusations like that? Does your sordid little mind just conjure these up, or does Police school teach you how to act like an arsehole? No, Detective Sergeant, I haven’t deported any gangsters! Despite what you might think of me, I haven’t done any shady dealings. I didn’t go there to buy drugs, and I have not shagged anyone’s wife other than my own! Now if it’s all the same to you I think I’d like to end the interview right now!”

Alex was on his feet by this time, getting his face right into that of Marsh as he yelled at him. Satisfyingly, at one point a fleck of saliva flew from Alex’s mouth and spattered against the Marsh’s cheek. He ended his rant, eyes wild and cheeks flushed. Chris had shrunk back in his seat and was regarding the scene as a very self aware rabbit might regard a fight between 2 wolves.

After a moment, Marsh snorted an unexpected little laugh. “Okay, I am satisfied that Mr Atkinson has no information that is of use to us in the investigation of his murder. DC Smith, do you concur?” Chris was startled out of his timidity, and answered with a hesitant “Uh…yeah. Yeah.”

“In that case, I am terminating this interview at, oh let’s call it ten past 3 eh?” And with that surprisingly jovial tone, Marsh switched off the phone’s recorder. “So,” he asked Alex. “Was that the truth then?”

Alex, still standing, sat back in his seat and began to unwind from his unseemly show of anger. He quietly and shamefacedly answered “Yes.”

“Right, well…shame, but there y’go. Chris, get this bloody phone will you?” Marsh rose from his seat and took his coat from the back of it. “We’re sorry to have wasted your time Mr Atkinson. D’you wanna walk with me to the front desk, and we can leave to your re-orientation.” Chris picked up the phone from the small table and put it into his inside jacket pocket, whilst Marsh put his jacket on and then went to the door and opened it.

Alex was a little puzzled by the sudden warmth from Marsh, so he was a little hesitant before joining him outside. Chris followed, and the three of them began their walk through the maze of corridors in the Vault. Alex could see they were on the 28th floor (it was the big number 28 painted at regular intervals along the corridors that tipped him off to this), so they were presumably headed for a lift and then to the ground. From there…well, truth be known Alex wasn’t sure what would happen. He had to go through a few days re-orientation, whatever that entailed. He was also thinking more and more of Joanna; the sooner he can start his re-orientation, the sooner he can finish it and be with her again. Although in his own mind, he’d been away from her for less than 24 hours; it was days since she’d seen him.

“What must she be thinking right now?” were the general thrust of Alex’s aching thoughts of her. She’d seen her husband’s body, had a day or so to grieve, and now she’s been told I’m alive but she can’t see me for a few days? Jesus, this must be awful for her.” Whatever Alex’s many other faults, he loved his wife blindly, unconditionally, and with a depth that always felt unbreakable to them both.

Whilst working himself into the depths of misery by proxy, he hadn’t noticed that they had arrived at a lift. “Here we go. Well? C’mon Chris, press the bloody button!” He turned and smiled at Alex. “And how are we feeling Mr Atkinson? Getting back to reality yet?”

As Marsh asked the question, the section of Alex’s brain that had been screaming at him to pay attention for the past couple of minutes finally made itself heard. “Hang on…Sergeant, why is it a shame that I don’t have any information for you? You’ve got the man who did it, haven’t you?”

Marsh stared hard at Alex. There was an uncomfortable and brooding silence, which deserved better than to be broken by the cheery “ping!” that announced the lift’s arrival. Marsh walked into the lift, still looking at Alex. “C’mon then you two. Are you coming?”

Alex and Chris looked at one another, then joined Marsh in the lift. As the doors closed, Marsh began to speak.

“I’ve been a copper for 20 years now. I love this city y’know? And I want to keep it as clean as we can manage. Checks and balances, that’s how it works. I’ve been a DS for 12 years, and before that I spent 8 on the beat. Heh. That’s why Chris and I got the job of interviewing you. Paki Alley was on my beat for every one of those 8 years, and I know without even looking that you’re rolling your eyes at that, aren’t you? What’s the matter? Don’t get much coarse language in your day to day then? Doth the tongue of the fat fuck offend thee Alex? Heh,” Marsh waved away the beginnings of an apology from Alex. “Yeah, I know Paki Alley. I know that most of the people living there have got roots in India and Bangladesh, so I know how stupid that grubby little name sounds n’all. I know you weren’t going there to buy drugs because I know that every soul who lives where you died is a decent, law abiding citizen. And regardless of whatever kind of racist you might think me to be, I don’t believe for one second that Mr Singh killed you. And it’s a shame, Mr Atkinson, that you can’t give me any more help because with the way things are, helpful and law abiding Mr Singh will shortly be serving at His Majesties Pleasure for your murder.”

“Ping!”

Marsh sighed “So that makes you pretty much useless to me.” The doors opened and the three men stepped out. “Look Alex, I’ll get my number put onto your mobile. Call me if you do remember anything that might be useful. Something about this stinks and it’s not your breath. Come on Chris.”

With that, the two policemen made off down the main corridor to the front security desk leaving Alex in a rather stunned silence. His death, it seemed, had not been the cut and dried affair he’d thought it would be. So what was it?

He stood by the lift in a reverie for some minutes, until a middle aged and moustachioed man in a security uniform approached him. “Ah! The sergeant said you’d be by the lift Mr Atkinson. Would you like to come with me? I’ll take you to your room. There’s a full rundown of your re-orientation and there’ll be a meal in a couple of hours. Would you like to step this way sir?”

Alex, frowning at the interruption in his train of thought, gave a sigh. He wasn’t going to be able to get any more information about why he had been murdered until he could catch up on what had happened in the last year. And for that he would need to speak with Joanna, his friends, and his colleagues at work. For now, he had to endure his re-orientation and put his questions to the back of his mind.