Twenty four hours: part 1
An unexpected meeting
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 handles all portal-related criminal activity. It can be a dangerous job, but somebody’s got to do it. DC Yannick Clarke has now lost two partners - one killed in the line of duty, the other transferred far away to a neighboring dimension. The work continues…
Early shift
On duty: DC Yannick Clarke & DC Frank Holland
London.
1974. May.
Signing his name to the bottom of the report, Clarke closed the folder and clicked the button into place to seal it closed. The case had been generic and unchallenging, if amusing. A classic bar fight involving a koth, two aen’fa and some humans - all good ingredients for as ruckus or the setup for a joke. There were bars in south London that were unofficially Palinese territory. Koth went there, and aen’fa, and humans from Palinor, but the venues were usually best avoided by London locals. They were havens for people who had been forcibly removed from their birth dimension. Clarke wasn’t keen on such places existing in London, and disliked the idea that he wouldn’t be welcome, but he understood the need for them.
The problem, of course, was that they tended to become targets for disgruntled Mid-Earth humans with a grudge. Anyone feeling abandoned, or let down by the system, or looking for someone to blame. Picking on a room full of koth is rarely a good way to work out your problems.
A messy evening for some, then, but a tidy and simple case for Clarke and Holland. Nothing the regular officers couldn’t have handled, but it got shunted over to the SDC as was inevitable with anything involving anyone who was not human.
“Be simpler if we just closed down the bars,” Holland said from his adjacent desk.
“It’s not the patrons in the bars starting the fights, though,” Clarke said. He checked that he’d included everything in the folder that was supposed to be there, scanning over the surface of his desk. Phones rang elsewhere in the large office, Robin intercepting most of them.
“No,” Holland continued, “but if the bars weren’t there, then you wouldn’t get people going to them and causing hassle. Problem solved.”
“Or you’d just end up pushing it somewhere else.”
Holland grunted. “Fair point. And at least it keeps the fighting inside the establishments, rather than out on the streets.” He sighed. “Could be worse.”
The man had a point, but Clarke couldn’t help but wonder what Styles would think about it. She had a skill at seeing the world from different points of view, in a way that Clarke struggled with. He could do it in a professional capacity - could get inside the head of a criminal - but Styles didn’t do her job from that angle. She focused on the other end, the person at the pointy end of the dagger; the victim. That was the start and the end for her, and it was an approach he struggled with. His job was to catch criminals and stop them from repeating their crimes, but that wasn’t enough for her. That’s probably part of why she’d taken the liaison job in Bruglia: it got her closer to the source of the issues she’d dealt with in her time at the SDC in London. She wanted to fix them before they happened.
He didn’t say any of that to Holland. The man wouldn’t understand, and would likely just take the piss. Holland was the exact opposite to Styles, with an almost sociopathic disinterest in the people they encountered doing the job.
Clarke had always leaned more towards Holland’s line of thinking, but perhaps a bit of both was needed if there was ever going to be progress. Tucking the folder under his arm, he walked across the brightly lit office, airy despite being windowless, and deposited it on DS Shaw’s desk.
“What do you have for me, Clarke?”
“The brawl from last week. Witness statements, full details of who was there, how it started, and how it ended. All very cut-and-dry.”
Shaw nodded. She was an odd one. Efficient and got the job done, but always stayed distant from the rest of them. She’d had a bit of a rep as a party animal when she’d transferred over, but she’d never shown that side. At least, not in Clarke’s presence.
“Emergency call,” Robin said, her voice effortlessly cutting through the room as usual, despite her never seeming to actually shout. “Just came through from Control. Report of a domestic disturbance, suspect of Palinese origin. Which doesn’t narrow it down.” She listened for a moment, the headset pressed to her ear, then repeated the details. “344 Sterling Court, E13. SDC presence requested.”
Clarke felt his skin prickle. A coldness rippled through him.
“Hold on,” Robin said, “isn’t that…?” She stopped, then looked up at Clarke with wide eyes. “Yannick?”
“Let’s go,” he said, running across the office and grabbing his jacket.
Holland jumped up, gulping the last of his coffee.
“We’re taking a car,” Clarke said, pulling his truncheon from a desk drawer and fastening it to his belt.
“Do you need the response unit?” Robin was standing now. “They’re out on another job. I can reroute them.”
“Only if I call.”
Holland ran to catch up. “What’s the big rush?”
“344 Sterling Court. Same flat where Callihan was killed.”
The journey across the city took too long. Clarke’s heart beat ever faster as they drew nearer to Sterling Court, that dead end road lined with apartment blocks that was branded onto his mind.
They rode in silence most of the way, Clarke driving, foot to the floor, siren blaring on the roof. Pedestrians cleared the road and rickshaws pulled to the side as they roared past, smoke belching out of the back of the police automobile. Events from two years prior flashed through Clarke’s head, one after another. He’d played through that day over and over countless times, thinking through all the different decisions he could have made, all the ways it could have gone.
London streets moved past, the stench of the docks wafting north, the factories spewing their unwanted children into the air.
“What’s the plan?” Holland asked, uncharacteristically acquiescent. Even he was capable of reading the room, on occasion.
“I’ll go up first. Stay within visual, be on the radio. We’ll go quietly and carefully. Once I give the all clear, you come up.”
“The all clear? What if there’s something dangerous up there?”
“Then I’ll let you know. No risks this time.”
“You going up there alone is a risk, Clarke.”
“That’s fine, as long as it isn’t anyone else. Let me check it out first.”
Holland shook his head. “I’m not interested in heroics.”
It was guilt, not heroism. Clarke clenched his teeth together and drove a little faster.
“I’ll be careful. I’ll only go into the flat if necessary. It’s probably nothing. Someone playing a prank.”
Clarke didn’t believe that for a second.
“Someone’s playing us for a joke, I want to know who, so I can fuck them up,” Holland said. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a handgun.
“Jesus,” Clarke said, “where did that come from?”
“I had Scarra load up a couple of the cars. Just in case.”
“Don’t go shooting anyone.”
“I’m not the one that needs it.”
They pulled into Sterling Court. It was exactly the same as before, as if nothing had happened. Clarke felt like something should have changed, to mark Callihan’s death, though he didn’t know what. The apartment building bulldozed to the ground, perhaps.
Leaving an unhappy Holland with the vehicle, Clarke moved to the stairwell. The weight of the handgun was uncomfortable inside his jacket. He’d trained on weapons in his twenties, but that had been a lifetime ago.
He climbed the stairs, reliving every step. It all played out exactly the same as it had before, except this time he was alone. There was no young, promising, exciting new detective full of ideas and hope at his side. Just as well.
The door to flat 344 beckoned. He stood against the wall and squinted to see through the windows, but the blinds were lowered. There was no noise, save for children playing in the decrepit park at the end of the street, and a television blasting from another flat further down the walkway.
He approached the door. About to knock, he then noticed that it was already ajar. It felt like an invitation. Clarke pulled the gun from his jacket, held his torch in his other hand, then nudged the door open with one foot.
The flat was dark, and quiet. There was a strange smell in the air, of machinery and copper. His eyes adjusted to the gloom and he picked out a shape at the far end, slumped into a battered armchair.
Clarke flicked on the torch and shone the beam into the dark recess. The body in the chair was mangled, a mess of plastic and metal and translucent tubing, blue and white fluids spattered onto the tattered carpet.
“Hello again, Detective Constable Clarke,” came a voice, oddly synthesised as if playing from an old radio. “I am in need of some assistance.”
Thanks for reading!
Well, that was all very exciting. I’ve been looking forward to writing this one for a while, although it’s shifted forms several times since the idea first appeared.
Meanwhile! The month of May finally wrapped up, meaning that I’ve drawn my (presumably) final mermaids for the year. I was quite pleased with the final three:
It turned out to be quite a revealing experiment. Having to come up with a new take on such a specific theme every single day wasn’t easy, especially as I’ve never thought of myself as being very good at character art. It was a good excuse to try developing useful techniques, from photo reference to 3D composition and various lighting and colouring experiments.
Good stuff. The daily commitment absolutely helped me improve my illustration skills, just as writing every week has immeasurably helped my fiction.
Things to read
I read some interesting stuff this week:
The Science of Seeing What Isn’t There - An older post from
about mirages that seem to defy both sense and physics (but are, in fact, completely logical).Black holes can get really, really big - Mind-expanding stuff from the
. As usual.Only the rich can afford to make art - Off Substack, the Guardian laments how the lack of state support has shrunk the art world in the UK. It’d be nice to think that the creator economy can turn some of this around, but I’m not optimistic. You need to have lots of spare time (and, therefore, some money to start with) to forge a path that way.
I’m taking part in an ebook giveaway called Free Science Fiction and Fantasy Reads. If that sounds like you, get thee hence.
And finally, if you’re a fiction writer don’t miss the Fictionistas meet-up this month. It’s been a while since the last one. Looks like this month’s meet-up has a UK-friendly time, so I’m hoping to be there.
Author notes
This storyline was originally conceived as more of a comedy-action tale, riffing on the 48 Hours movies. I’ve had it on the episode pile for a while, never quite finding a place to slot it in. Its time has finally come, and it’s ended up being very different to that original concept.
There was some discussion on Notes this week about plotting, and characters, and getting the two to behave with one another. You can see that chat here:
The advice from
was on point, also. She noted that working backwards can work, plotting in reverse to figure out how to manoeuvre1 a character from A to B. That’s what I ended up doing here and it proved far simpler. Starting in the apartment and working out the sequence of events that led up to it proved to be a simpler route.This storyline is also one that’s going to play out in a non-linear manner, so I had to work out a fair few details that have yet to be revealed. I’ll talk more about that next week.
More specifically, here we have Clarke having to face the worst event of his (professional?) life. He never seems to be able to get away from it. Spelunking into his state of mind as he realises the significance of the emergency call was fun.
Also fun was writing a chapter in June 2023, some 70+ chapters into the story, that directly references the second chapter from October 2021. That kind of long-term connection is something you can only really do in a serial - it doesn’t have the same kind of pay-off in a singular novel. I always remember watching season 3 of Babylon 5 back in the 90s and being astonished that the writer was directly referencing an episode from season 1. That just didn’t happen back then.
At some point I need to write that article about how episodic storytelling has evolved, especially on television.
Thanks again for reading.
Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash
I can never, ever, EVER spell this word without looking it up. I’m pretty good at spelling, but this one always defeats me.
Good to see Lola has had lasting positive influence on Clarke.
Holland wanting to carry more deadly weapons in no way reflects possibilities he's becoming more violent or paranoid. At all. No siree. All is well.
Well. Let's see what ripped up the AI! At least it's not a body. Also no triumphant return for Sally, brandishing an arm.
"Maneuver," American-style. Heh. There's the occasional language joke the "American Revolution," was all about removing a bunch of useless "O's" and "U's" from words and spelling things with an "er" phoneme with "er" at the end instead of "re." 😉 It all ties back to the written roots of the language when the Saxon influenced monks kept trying to basic everything off Germanic spellings while the Norman influenced monks kept using Frankish. Lets face it, written English is a mess, and the fragmentation of dialects across the Americas, Australia/New Zealand, et. al. haven't helped.
At least it's not Irish. Why is "Nimah" pronounced "Neeve?" My Irish friends laugh and say I'm likely correct when I hypothesize during British occupation the Irish came up with really weird spellings specifically to fuck with the Engish. "Nie-MAH?" "No, it's 'NEEVE,' ya twat!" Except, when spoken, one uses a ruder word than "twat," which is too friendly sounding to be offensive.
The prior paragraph highlights the US vs UK grammar differences about quotation marks.