One shot: Remnants

A new Triverse story

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

Previously: The Specialist Dimensional Command branch of the Met police has been relocated. One of the detectives has unfinished business with the old, abandoned headquarters…

London.
1974. March.

His key still worked. The door of the old office at the corner of Stamford and Coin clicked shut behind him, blocking out the noise of the street. The bottom of the stairwell still had its strange odour, the whiff of something that had become stuck somewhere out of sight and had spent several years slowly turning to slime.

It was cold. Colder than outside. No heating any more - there was nobody left to keep warm. Kaminski pulled a cigarette from its packet, went to put it to his lips and then paused. Disgruntled, he pushed it back into the pack. No sense in leaving a trail of ash and the smell of smoke. He wasn’t even supposed to be there.

The new place at the Joint Council was fancy. It made him feel itchy, like a well-tailored but ill-fitting suit. The SDC had always flown under the radar. A policy Kaminski had employed most of his life, and one he was comfortable extending to his workplace. They might have given them the basement, but the tower’s basement was smarter than most top floor apartments.

Not that they hadn’t earned it. The problem was that the SDC had earned it years earlier - before he’d even started there. It was only now that they’d been noticed, and moved into the spotlight. Bad timing. The last thing he, Bakker or the others wanted was eyes on them. If the old place had been wired, then god knows what the Joint Council tower had going for it in terms of surveillance.

He had a hunch, though. Dropping in on the old digs after his shift wasn’t just a nostalgia trip. He climbed the stairs, the musty, damp air feeling like a warm blanket. He’d done this every day for years.

Pushing through the door into the main office, he was startled by a man in a hard hat and bright overalls coming the other way. They nearly collided, the other man almost dropping the large box of random office supplies he was carrying.

“Oh, hey, fella,” he stammered, “what are you doing here? Place is closed up.”

Kaminski pulled out his ID. “Used to work here. Taking one last look around.”

“Oh, right, of course,” the man said. He was clean-up. Taking away the last of what had been the SDC. “I’m just finishing up. Only things left are a couple of desks at the back. Boys coming tomorrow with a truck to take the big items.”

The room was mostly empty. Kaminski’s desk was gone, as was Clarke’s and Robin’s. The evidence board was already over at the tower. He wondered if the shitty coffee machine was still in the tiny kitchen out the back. “Looks like you’ve got most of it done.”

“Yeah, oh, sure, yeah. Rest of the gang’s already struck off for the day.” He shrugged. “It’s a Friday. Got places to be. Anyway, most of it was done last month. By the time we go here it was ninety per cent finished. Previous crew had taken all the big stuff, and ripped down all the electrics. Left it in a right mess. We spent most of last week just clearing up after them.” He pointed up at the ceiling, which was missing several foam tiles.

“Hope it wasn’t too much of a hassle,” Kaminski said.

“Ah, got paid. All good. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it, mate. Make sure you close the street door on your way out?”

“I remember.”

The man grinned. “Course you do. Don’t know why I’m telling you what to do, detective. Have a good one.”

The office was quiet again. Just Kaminski, his thoughts and the desks piled in the corner. He walked the floor, the carpet squeaking under his feet. There were lighter marks on the floor where his desk had been. He knew the space by the distance from the door. Next to his had been Chakraborty’s. He remembered her first day, when she’d walked through the door. He hadn’t got much work done that day.

She’d moved back to her place on New Year’s Day. They’d had Christmas together, with his parents. Playing at being a proper little family. She hadn’t liked it. Another bad new year. He had to stop having those.

He stood in the space where Lola’s desk had been. Before her, it had been Callihan’s. Shit, John Callihan. Somehow he hadn’t thought about the guy for what felt like weeks. Maybe it was leaving the office. Callihan’s memory was locked up in that dark, stuffy place. It would be easy to forget him in the gleaming glass and steel and plastic of the tower. Pretend everything was fine in the world, in the triverse. That would be easier, for sure. Forget about his killing. Just do the job, solve cases, make the world a better place in imperceptible ways. Forget about Callihan. Forget about how he’d had her before Kaminski. Even though he was already engaged to an amazing woman. How that hadn’t been enough, and he’d had to have Nisha as well.

That was unfair. Nisha was a grown-up. She’d made her own decisions. And she’d decided on Callihan. Until he was dead; then she’d settled for Kaminski. For a time.

Damn, he really wanted that cigarette.

Lola had made the right call. Fucking off to another dimension wasn’t the worst plan. Maybe he could put in a call to Justin, see if Max-Earth needed a liaison officer as well.

He wouldn’t do that, of course. He’d stick it out, complaining all the way. That’s how he did things. He grabbed one of the desks, which was now empty, and dragged it across the floor until it was underneath some of the missing ceiling tiles. Hopping up onto the desk, he tip-toed and peered into the cavity above. Flicking on his lighter, he looked around for anything electronic and suspicious. There was nothing other then light fittings and cobwebs. They’d ripped it all out. Which meant the place was most likely clean.

That could be useful. Maybe the old HQ still had a purpose. At least until it got sold or torn down.

Crouching, he carefully lowered himself and sat on the edge of the desk. A book had fallen out of one of the drawers of the otherwise emptied desk. It must have been left tucked away in the back of the drawer by accident.

It was bound in red and had a hard, fabric outer cover. Picking it up, he examined it idly. Well-thumbed, clearly read multiple times. Some pages were turned down at the corner. He flipped it over. The Plunge, it was called, by someone called John Pierson. Never heard of him. Sounded like a dead author. Kaminski opened the cover and read the bio on the inside cover. A Max-Earth American writer. Ah, there it was - he’d died a decade earlier. The blurb made it sound like some kind of political treatise, but presented as fiction. Frowning, Kaminski looked at the mark on the floor, tracing the desk back to where he’d found it.

Not that the man had ever actually shown up in the office, but it must have been Miller’s. Kaminski turned the book over in his hands.

Might be worth a read.

---

Photo by Eder Pozo Pérez on Unsplash

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Author notes

Ah, Zoltan Kaminski. It’s been a while, buddy. After the ‘Pet Shop’ story he’s taken a bit of a back seat (I mean, understandably - it was a difficult time), while I’ve focused on Styles and Clarke.

Balancing an ensemble is always a challenge, especially when there is a relatively loose plot. No Adults Allowed and The Mechanical Crown also have ensembles, but they’re more tightly wound in terms of forward momentum. NAA in particular has all the characters in the same place all the way through, more-or-less. Triverse, on the other hand, has quite a range of people all doing different things.

I’ve always enjoyed writing Kaminski’s world-weariness. He sees the world in a grim light, but without any of the noirish melodrama you sometimes get from that kind of detective character.

Here, of course, we get a reminder that Callihan was having an affair with Chakraborty. And now Kaminski finds himself spearheading the investigation into what really happened to Callihan - exactly the kind of ironic twist Kaminski would find inevitable.

There’s a small sequence of events in this chapter which I rather like. Essentially:

1. The clearance guy notes the missing ceiling tiles

2. Kaminski needs to move a desk in order to examine the ceiling

3. In moving the desk, he dislodges the book

I like that those three things connect in a satisfying way. Kaminski didn’t have to search to find the book, and it wasn’t just lying around to be found. It’s a simple moment, but I like it when action and staging links together into the storytelling. There’s nothing more frustrating than a movie or TV show in which the staging doesn’t work, and you’re left wondering why characters are doing what they’re doing.

That then reminded me of the Smartless interview with Steven Spielberg:

Spielberg talks about staging and blocking in that. He’s always been the master, and when I’m writing action sequences I’ve always got his action design in the back of my head. He’s always been able to merge chaos and choreography, creating a visual dance sequence that feels made up on the spot but clearly isn’t. The Indiana Jones films do this, obviously, which feeds into the Indy character. Everything flows and slots together.

Not that I’m comparing Kaminski moving a desk and picking up a book to a Spielberg action sequence. That would clearly be silly. But you hopefully get where I’m coming from. Spielberg always has his characters and camera on the move, unless he has a good reason not to, and I try to stay conscious of that in my prose. It’s very easy to have characters stay still and do nothing while you’re indulging their inner monologues.

That’s why this chapter moves Kaminski from the stairwell, to the office, across the office and then up to the ceiling. It’s nothing major, but it creates a sense of geography within the scene.

Also, I enjoyed using absent furniture to trigger thoughts and memories.

Anyway, enough of me patting myself on the back. See you next week.