Traffic: Part 2

A trip to the morgue

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: DC Yannick Clarke meets his new partner, DC Lola Styles, who was assigned to the Specialist Dimensional Command after DC John Callihan was killed in the line of duty. Meanwhile, detectives Nisha Chakraborty and Zoltan Kaminski are examining the body of a female aen’fa (a species from the neighbouring dimension of Palinor) which has washed up on the banks of the Thames…

If you missed the previous part, which was a bonus dive into portal mechanics (yep), you can find it here:

Bonus: A Modern Assessment of Portal Physics

Late Shift
On duty: DC Nisha Chakraborty and DC Zoltan Kaminski

London.
1972. August.

The morgue was so clean it reminded Nisha of a restaurant kitchen. Whenever she went out for a meal, she imagined the chefs dissecting the animals, examining their innards for cause of death. Intended to be eaten by a human. She smiled to herself, for only a moment, then returned her attention to the coroner and the corpse on the table. The aen’fa girl from the river was now more ordinarily proportioned, the bloating having reduced, her skin thin and flaccid as a result of over-stretching. She would have been slim, probably attractive. Her skin was a light, pastel green, though much of it was now a slushy, decaying brown, like autumn leaves rotting on the pavement.

Nisha wrinkled her nose. At the back of her mind she knew that John Callihan would have been on one of these slabs not long ago.

“She’d been in the river a good while, at least a week,” the doc was saying, “the only reason she’s in as good condition as she is, is because the river’s been colder than usual, and the slower aen’fa decomposition rate. Putrefaction brought the body back up where it got tangled in netting, which is how it ended up on the bank.”

Zoltan snorted. “Any guesses on where she entered the water?”

Dr Steven Wong always seemed more excited by his job than was appropriate. Nisha liked her job, believed in what they did at the SDC, but Wong? He loved pulling apart bodies, especially if they were of Palinese origin. Cracking his knuckles, he pointed at a plastic container on floor at the end of the table. “Hard to say with any accuracy, but there was a lot of detritus tangled in her limbs and hair. Netting, rope, mostly, but also some broken glass, old tin cans. Might give you an indication.”

Leaning over the container, Nisha grimaced. It was a sludgy concoction that looked like it had been dredged from the depths of the Thames. “Did she drown?”

“Unlikely. The lungs were fully collapsed, and were only wet through prolonged exposure. There is no evidence of inhalation of water, so I’d say she was dead before she was submerged.” He pointed at the aen’fa’s forehead, above the sharp, eyebrow-less brow, where a deep gash cut through to the bone. “There’s also this. Definitely bludgeoned with something solid and heavy, fracturing the skull around this area. Looking at the impact marks and the size, I’d guess at the side of a table, or a mantelpiece sculpture, something like that. Can still find flecks of red paint in the wound, and whatever hit her left an uneven mark - which is why I’m angling towards some sort of object, with an uneven surface.”

Zoltan moved round the table for a better look. “Did it hit her, or did she hit it?”

“Can’t say. There’s evidence of bruising around her ankles and shoulders, consistent with the body being moved, though.”

“Right,” Zoltan said. “Whacked, then dumped in the river. Charming.”

“Make sure we get some of those paint flecks out and examined,” Nisha said. “You never know.”

“One other thing,” Wong said, lifting the body on one side. “There’s a mark at the base of the spine here.”

“What is that? A tattoo?”

“That’s what I thought, but nothing that civilised. It’s a brand. Made through direct application of extreme heat.”

The dark, raised mark, about the length of a finger, depicted two connected chain links. Nisha grimaced. “That’s an ugly thing. Some sort of aen’fa mark? A tribal thing perhaps?”

“Not seen one before,” Zoltan said, examining it closely.

“How many aen’fa have you seen this closely?”

“Point. OK, let’s wrap it up. Doc, we’ll take a look through the contents of your stinking bucket. Give us a shout if you find anything else.”

A ceiling fan meandered haplessly, unable to shift the stifling humidity in the offices of the Specialist Dimensional Command. Clarke sat at his desk, flicking idly through incoming case files without giving any of them his proper attention. He knew he’d need to get back out in the world soon, but not yet. Checking over old cases, dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, felt more comfortable. The new girl, Styles, was good. Keen as anything, highly competent, insightful, clearly had done her homework. Young people like her made Clarke feel even more obsolete. What had he been doing when he was her age? Certainly not making detective so soon.

The SDC office was a barrel of sweat but it was better than being on the streets. Folders and files kept both of them out of trouble; kept Styles from being anywhere near danger. She’d already helped him close off a handful of loose ends from old investigations, each time it feeling like a nod to Callihan. Clarke had a notion that he’d be watching approvingly, pleased to see those cases being closed. He’d always cared more than he should.

The main door opened and Holland and Hobb came in, ready for the night shift. Holland laughed raucously. “Clarke! You’re here again? It’s not even your shift.”

Clarke ignored him.

“What about you, Styles? Don’t you have a life to attend to?”

The insult seeming to wash over her, Styles smiled. “I like being here, Frank. I still have a lot of catching up to do.”

Holland stared for a moment, mouth curled up into a confused sneer, then he turned away as if the conversation had never happened and joined Hobb over at her desk. They’d been there to take down the koth. Clarke ought to be grateful, but it felt unfinished. There was so much he still didn’t understand about the encounter that had killed Callihan, but everyone else seemed content to keep it in the past, like any other old case. He turned his eyes back to his desk.

“So when’s our first pub trip?” Styles asked. “That’s a thing, right? What bar does the squad hang out at?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke said, still distracted, “I don’t really go along to those things.”

“What things? Pubs?” Her voice was always so perky, so enthusiastic.

“I go to pubs,” he said, “just not with people.”

A silence followed, long and deliberate, even Styles holding her tongue for once. Clarke was grateful when the door banged open again and Chakraborty and Kaminski entered, chatting away to each other. Kaminski nodded in Clarke’s direction, while Chakraborty headed straight for the evidence board at the head of the room. She began pinning papers and items up onto the board.

Kaminski approached them. “Clarke,” he said in greeting. “Styles.” He lit a cigarette, the smoke pluming into a cloud above him. “The old man got you down yet?”

“Give me a chance,” Clarke said, “she’s only been here a day.”

“We’re fine,” Styles said. “Yannick’s been showing me where everything is, how his filing system works, what the open cases are. I’m getting the hang of it.”

Raising his eyebrows, Kaminski grinned from behind his cigarette. “Well, if Yannick doesn’t mind, come and have a look over here at what we’ve got. Aen’fa dragged from the river. Not everyday you get one of these.”

Clarke glanced up at Styles and shrugged. It wasn’t like he had to give her permission. She wandered over to join Chakraborty, who was still busily pinning up photographs. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t know why he was there, when it wasn’t even his shift. The office was the last place he wanted to be, and the only place he could think to be. It reminded him of Callihan.

Lola stared at the montage of death. A girl’s body in various poses, displaying every part of her, all that she had once been. Images from the bank of the Thames, others from the morgue. Close-ups on exposed lungs, on a gaping wound long dry of blood, of fingers and toes and bruises. Other details of items Lola didn’t recognise: numbers, letters, insignias. She was no longer person; she was evidence.

“I’ll bet she’d have been pretty,” Kaminski said.

“You’d think that about any aen’fa,” Chakraborty said with a snort.

“You know what I mean. Reckon she was here legally?”

“The way she ended up? Doubtful. We’ll have to see if we can find an ID match tomorrow.”

Kaminski looked at his watch. “Nearly home time. Want to grab some beers on the way out?”

“Sure, sounds good.” Chakraborty pointed at one particular image, showing what looked to be a drawing of two links on a chain. “Wish I knew what this meant. Might tell us where she was from. Family mark or something.”

Frowning, Lola leaned in. “That’s not an aen’fa symbol,” she said. “Where was it?”

“Base of the spine,” Kaminski said, pointing at the position on Chakraborty’s back. “Just so.”

“Doc says it’s a brand,” Chakraborty said, knocking his hand away. “Not a tattoo.”

Lola stared at the two of them. How could they not know this? She’d only just started and didn’t want to be showy on her first week, but it had to be said. “Aen’fa do use tattoos to denote status and family ties, but they do it overtly, in areas easily seen. Base of the spine doesn’t make sense. This isn’t aen’fa - I’d say it was done here, probably by humans.”

Kaminski looked at her askance. “You some kind of expert?”

She returned his gaze, then glanced at Chakraborty, then back to him. “Yes,” was all she said.

His face changed, as if he was reconsidering his assessment of her. “Good. We could do with more of those.”

Chakraborty unrolled a sheet of paper and pinned it up. It was a coloured pencil sketch of the girl as she might have looked in better times: green skin, vibrant to the point of almost glowing, hair a rich, coppery orange. Eyes big in the narrow face. The points of her ears sharp, rather than distorted and torn. Her expression was neutral but Lola imagined her as fierce, independent, determined to build a life on Earth. She deserved better.

Frank Holland swaggered over from the kitchen. It hadn’t taken Lola long to pick up on bad vibes between Holland and Clarke, though she hadn’t worked out the specifics. “What you got?” He stared at the board, nodding to himself. “You can tell she’d have been a looker.”

Lola bit down slightly on her tongue. She was the rookie and couldn’t start pulling people up, or throwing around criticisms. She needed to get her feet under the desk first. She saw Clarke push himself up from his desk and start crossing the office toward where they were gathered.

“I’ve seen one of those before,” Holland said, pointing at the chain motif. “Work cases around Soho and you’ll see stuff like that. Not exactly that, but marks like it. It’s a territorial thing. Ownership. Property, you know.”

Kaminski lit another cigarette. “So she was a working girl?”

“That’d be my guess,” Holland said, turning and walking away.

Chakraborty harrumphed. “Nothing to do with aen’fa traditions after all.”

Lola attempted her sweetest of sweet smiles.

“That’s something to follow up on tomorrow,” Kaminski said. “But I’m signing off and heading out before Bakker calls me in for anything else.”

Clarke waved at Kaminski and Chakraborty as they grabbed their bits and headed out the door. He stood next to Lola. “Anything interesting?”

“I thought there’d be a better understanding of Palinor culture here,” Lola said, unable to keep the disdain from her voice. “Isn’t that what we’re specialists in?”

“Yeah, but we also have to be specialists in sentient spaceships and quantum computing.” He laughed, though not unkindly. “Listen, there’s a lot to get your head around when you’re trying to handle crimes across the triverse. We can’t all be experts in everything. Why do you think you got the gig here? That’s why they hired you. Everyone knows you’re a nerd for anything from Palinor.”

She felt her cheeks flush. “Well, someone’s got to be.”

“You’re not wrong. What did Holland want?”

“He thought he recognised this,” she pointed at the photograph of the chain mark. “Thinks it’s a territorial brand. I think he thinks she was a prostitute.”

“He thinks every woman is a prostitute,” Clarke said, a little too quickly. He glanced at her. “Sorry. He might have a point in this instance.” He touched his hand to the pencil sketch, then looked at the photographs of the girl lying on the table in the morgue. He muttered something under his breath, then spun and strode back toward his desk.

Lola followed as quickly as she could. “What is it?”

Clarke lifted the box of Callihan’s old case files and dumped them onto the desk. He rifled through them, hunting for something, eventually pulling a particular folder out triumphantly. He leafed through the papers inside, pulled one out. “I’ll be damned.”

“What?” Lola moved closer, trying to get a look. “What is it?”

He read from the paper. “‘Description of missing person: Aen’fa female. About five-nine. Nineteen years old. Orange hair. Green skin. Illegally entered Mid-Earth eleven months prior. Whereabouts unknown, reported missing by acquaintance known only as Shona.’”

“Is that her?”

“It was the last case I was working with Callihan. Missing person. He had a contact, this Shona, but she’d only ever talk to him and even that didn’t go anywhere. We lost contact with her and I thought that was that.”

It sounded unlikely, but was better than nothing. And it was the first time she’d seen Clarke even slightly animated since she’d arrived. “So now what? Tell Chakraborty and Kaminski when they’re back in tomorrow?”

Clarke took his jacket from the back of his chair. “Now, we go to Soho.”

---

Thanks for reading!

Author notes for paid subscribers continue below the fold…

Tales from the Triverse continues to be such a new challenge for me, very different from anything I've done previously. Finding the characters within the necessary exploration of the crime storylines is a fascinating challenge. How much to deviate away from the core 'investigation' narratives is something I'm still working out.

The stability within the characters is starting to pay off now, with Clarke, Styles, Chakraborty and Kaminski leading the pack (Holland and Hobb skirting the edges). While other characters will be weaving in and out as the story progresses, these are likely to remain the leads for season 1 at least.

Next week we get back out into the world and will be exploring this alternative London some more, which I'm very excited about. See you there.