Late shift

On duty: DC Nisha Chakraborty and DC Zoltan Kaminski

London.

1972. August.

Mid-afternoon in London in August was unbearable, especially in the offices of the SDC. When the department had been established a decade earlier there had been a lot of talk about them getting their own place, in a newly acquired building across town. They wouldn’t be shoved into another tiny corner of Scotland Yard but would have a brand new headquarters round the corner from the portal station. Turned out it was an old apartment building, gutted and refurbished using only the cheapest materials available. Not enough ventilation, no canteen, only two toilets between all of them. They had to share a couple of old cars, discarded by the main force for being too slow. Sure, they were closer to the portal station, but that meant they were farther from everything else they might need - the morgue, the records room, the garage. Being assigned to the SDC was going to be a special appointment, a real rung on the career ladder. Instead, it was where they sent trouble-makers and rookies and old has-beens.

Yannick Clarke was in the latter category, and he knew it. He sat in Callihan’s chair, next to Callihan’s desk, staring at the cardboard box containing Callihan’s personal items. He’d have to deliver them to Zara at some point. He’d seen her at the funeral, but they hadn’t spoken. Clarke had wanted to go up, offer his condolences, maybe give her a hug. He’d known that was what he should do, but instead had stood silently at the grave as the coffin was lowered, head bowed, looking at no-one, shame piling upon shame.

There was a photo of Callihan on the side of the box, the regular mugshot that got re-used on everything. There he was, that amazing porn tash, eyes narrowed and face set like he was ready to change the whole world. He probably would have, too, if he’d had the chance. The contents of the box were a snapshot of Callihan’s life: photos of Zara and his parents and sister, a framed photo of his graduation to detective, a metal shield of the Met police symbol mounted on a wooden plaque, his sketchbook. A man in a box.

Across the office were Nisha and Kaminski. Huddled around a corkboard, pinning up ideas and photographs. Working cases together. Carrying on as if everything were normal. Nisha hadn’t spoken to him since it had happened. She hadn’t attended the funeral, and had instead ploughed herself back into the work. He couldn’t tell if it was because she didn’t care, or because she cared too much.

The drawers of the desk still contained the open case files that they’d been working on together. Clarke needed to go through them one-by-one and tally them up with his own files. They’d worked well together, Callihan’s optimism and drive bringing the energy and Clarke tempering it with some much-needed, world-weary cynicism. It had been a good match for being police in London. Clarke grimaced. They were sending him a new partner, who would be arriving later that afternoon. A girl, barely out of school. They kept pairing him up with these rookies; maybe they thought he couldn’t do any harm being the babysitter, but the koth had proven that theory wrong.

He was drawn back to the sound of glass shattering, his mind wandering back to the tower block and John’s head rolling to a stop on the walkway. The koth, big and huge and black, leaping out. It had looked at him with those red eyes, like burning coals, before leaping from the balcony. Clarke had stood there, so inert and useless that he might as well have been frozen by a spell, as Callihan’s murderer had escaped. For a moment he’d had thoughts of trying to save his partner, of somehow re-attaching the head. He’d thought about how he might do it, and whether CPR would work if he was able to hold the head close enough.

Instead, he’d stood there on the balcony, truncheon uselessly in his hand - as if he had ever been in a position to use it, against a koth of all things. He hadn’t even been there at the end, when Holland and Hobb had tracked down the killer. Holland had taken the shot. No closure left for Clarke. No satisfaction. No partner.

*

Stamford Street was host to innumerable cafes, restaurants and hotel, all serving the many travellers of the London portal station: politicians, historians, scientists, importers, exporters, officials and unofficials, immigrants and emigrants. As the only city containing two functioning portals, London was the epicentre of the entire triverse.

The offices of Specialist Dimensional Command were situated at the corner of Stamford and Coin, in a nondescript, squat building nestled between a fast food restaurant and a travel accessory shop claiming to stock everything one might need for a safari trip to the wilds of Palinor or an inter-planetary venture through Max-Earth’s solar system. Lola Styles doubted both claims but still had to resist the urge to buy herself a pair of supposedly poison-proof hiking boots. Just in case. Not that she’d ever be able to afford to visit Palinor.

She took a deep breath, then press the buzzer. After a few seconds a woman’s voice, young-sounding, came out of the tinny speaker. “SDC, who is this?”

“Lola,” she began, “I mean, Detective Constable Lola Styles. I’ve been transferred, this is my first day.” It all came out in a rush.

Another pause. “Oh, Lola! This is Robin, come right up and I’ll meet you at the top of the stairs.” The speaker hissed then went silent and the door to the street unlocked with a click.

She pushed at it, biting her lip, trying to contain the bubbling excitement within an air of professionalism. She’d read somewhere that a person’s most obvious attribute appeared twice as prominent upon first meeting, whether that be their hair, or their lips, or their weight. In her case, she worried about her enthusiasm, which she knew could be overwhelming.

But it was the Specialist Dimensional Command! The elite department established by the Commissioner himself, Joint Council-approved and tasked with solving portal-related crimes that were too unusual for regular policing. It had been her dream to make it here since she was a kid, driving her studies, her application to the police, her fast-tracking the detective exams. Entering the lobby, she wasn’t sure what precisely she had been expecting but the empty stairwell was not it. She thought it might be cooler inside, but the walls seemed to be acting more like a pressure cooker. There were crumpled cardboard boxes in one corner, a stack of unopened mail on the doormat and everything was a dull shade of brown. Keeping a low profile, making it look like any other building on the street. Clever.

She climbed the staircase, passing what appeared to be a floor dedicated entirely to storage, arriving at the top floor and another door with a metal sign screwed to it. It was the SDC. She’d arrived. Raising her hand to knock, she was startled when the door swung open before she’d had a chance to tap. Left standing with one fist raised, she smiled at the man on the other side; slightly shorter than average, stocky, with grey-flecked hair despite not appearing especially old. He glanced up at her fist and smiled, then raised his own in mock solute before laughing and pushing past.

Following him was a woman, maybe late twenties, with jet-black hair tied up into a tight bun, a long, slender nose and rich, brown eyes. She’d be beautiful if she didn’t also look so tired, eyes rimmed red. “Don’t mind him,” she said, holding out her hand. “Nisha Chakraborty. That was Zoltan, he’s a bit of an arsehole. You must be Clarke’s new partner? We’re just heading out to take a look at a body on the river.” She moved past, then turned back at the staircase. “Let’s get drinks sometime, get to know each other. We’re not all arseholes!”

Then Nisha was gone. Lola composed herself, sure that she could make a better impression next time, and strode into the office. It was reasonably large, and filled with desks piled high with papers and folders, a couple of partitioned offices on the far wall near the windows, presumably for whichever DI was in town. What struck Lola was how empty the place was, furniture aside. She could see someone behind the mottled glass in one of the offices, and a young woman was moving towards her with a big grin on her face, but that was it.

The approaching woman held out her hands. “Lola! You’re here early.”

Lola shrugged apologetically. “I couldn’t wait!” She sounded like a ten year old girl. Reel it in. First impressions. “I’m Lola Styles, the new detective.” Her lips curled into a smile. “Still sounds weird to say that.”

“You earned it, nothing weird about that. I’m Robin. Let me show you to your desk.” She guided Lola through the maze of chairs and desks and filing cabinets. “You just met DC Chakraborty and DC Kaminski. They’re both great, so don’t worry.” Lola wondered why she might be worrying. “We just got a call in about a body on the river. Aen’fa, I think. Sounded like it’d been there a while.” Robin pulled a face. “That’s why I stay in the office and answer phones.”

They were nearing a couple of desks in the far corner of the office. Lola realised with a start that there was another person in the room, but he was so still and, somehow, grey, that she hadn’t noticed him.

“DC Styles,” Robin announced gleefully, “meet DC Clarke. Yannick is your partner. DC Clarke, meet Lola.”

The man was old. She thought perhaps he looked older than his age. It wasn’t just his hair that was grey. She wondered if she poked him whether he would collapse into a pile of ash. “Hi, so pleased to meet you, DC Clarke.”

The man smiled, though even then it seemed somehow sad. “Just Clarke. Or Yannick. Forget the rank.”

“OK, likewise.” She put her handbag down on the table, on top of some papers. “I cannot tell you how excited I am to be here, at last. Getting assigned to the SDC has been my dream.” Calm it down, Lola.

He laughed. Abruptly, just for a moment. There was a little cruelty, though he hid it quickly. “This where all the cool kids are hanging out, now, eh?” He breathed in deeply. “Don’t stick around for long, kid. This place is the graveyard of ambition.” He pointed at his chest. “Look at me. I’ve been here since I was a boy.”

“What, really?”

He looked at her, then at Robin. “Is she for real?”

A door banged, and Lola was grateful for the distraction. A man had entered the room from another part of the building, holding a can of something fizzy. He waved jovially. “You must be Lola, our newest detective. I’m DS Collins.” He trotted up and shook her hand. Lola noted that he didn’t try to kiss it, or her cheek. “Call me Andrew, or Sarge, or whatever you like. Well, not whatever you like. Depends who’s in the room. Anyway, I’ll be looking after you, showing you around. Most shifts I’ll be here as well.”

Robin smiled. “You’re in safe hands. I’ll go through some of the boring stuff with you later.” She turned and headed back towards the reception desk near the entrance.

“Let me introduce you to the guv,” Collins said, guiding her gently by the arm away from Clarke’s desk. “DI Christopher Bakker, he’s very serious but knows his stuff.” Collins leaned in closer. “Don’t worry about Clarke. He’s had a bad time of it. You were briefed on all that with DC Callihan, I take it? Hit us all pretty hard.”

Everyone kept telling her not to worry.

Lola was beginning to worry.

*

The Thames was a foul sludge at the best of times. Late-afternoon in late-summer was the worst. Kaminski took a big sniff, then retched, doubling over. “Fuck me, that’s some rancid shit.” He held a sleeve of his jacket to his nose. “You know when you have a curry that makes you sweat chillies, and then the next day? Like it’s infected your insides. That’s what this is.”

Chakraborty glanced at him. “I’ve never had that.”

“Makes you feel alive.” He started scrambling down the shallow bank at the edge of the road, over the tangled rubbish and netting towards the dark, oil-stained strip of sand and pebbles.

“The curry or this smell?”

He laughed and pointed an accusatory finger at her, refusing to confirm or deny. She hadn’t been right since Callihan’s death, which wasn’t a surprise but was still painful to see. Nisha Chakraborty wasn’t one to open up about her feelings, especially about the guy she’d been sleeping with while he was engaged to someone else. That was a fact nobody else on the squad knew, which put Kaminski in the unique position of confidante. Not what he was good at. She’d doubled down on just about everything since Callihan’s death, everything except looking after herself.

Flicking open his lighter, he lit a cigarette. It took the edge off the stench. He lit a second and passed it to Chakraborty. “Let’s go see our inflatable victim,” he said, the smoke of the cigarette mixing with the Thames’ decay.

The body was twice the size it should be, translucent in places, like an over-stuffed sausage when the skin was ready to burst. A few rags clung to it but it was largely naked, veiny and bloated. It was a female aen’fa, though the distortions to the body from the water absorption made it hard to tell at a glance. River scum coated her skin, her wet hair clamped to her head and down her shoulders. Her eyes were gone.

“Nasty,” he said, in case anyone hadn’t already come to that conclusion.

“Aen’fa skin reacts a little differently to ours,” said Dr Steven Wong, approaching them. “She’s been in the water a long time.” He had a plastic coverall tied to his front and was wearing medical gloves. He looked like a hospital surgeon, though there was no rescuing this girl.

Chakraborty squatted down next to the body, seemingly unconcerned by the smell. Kaminski stayed standing where he was. “Reckon we’ll get an ID once the bloating goes down?”

Wong turned to her and nodded. “Perhaps. If she’s legal there’ll be a record of her somewhere. Can’t tell much now. Once the body dries out some back at HQ I’ll be able to carry out a proper examination. There’s definitely a wound to the head, and perhaps some bruising around the neck and shoulders, but it’s hard to be sure right now.”

Kaminski leaned forward. There was a deep gash on the girl’s forehead. “Wound to the head the cause of death? Not drowning?”

“Too early to say.”

Looking away from the gelatinous mess that had once been a person, Kaminski looked out across the river. Always washing up the city’s shit, literally and metaphorically. He wondered what the girl had looked like before she’d ended up in the water, wondered what she’d done with her life, and what had brought an aen’fa to this damned place. If he’d been born in a place with actual magic he wouldn’t have rushed to go through a portal to a world that could barely keep the lights on. Had she fallen into the river, hitting her head on the way? Taken her own life once she recognised the shithole she’d got herself into? Or did someone do this to her? Knock her out, throw her in?

A pleasure steamer drifted by in the centre of the river, its wheel kicking up a wave that lapped onto the shore. On the deck Kaminski could see revellers already preparing for the evening’s festivities.

The girl’s body rotted on the sand.