Early shift

On duty: DC Lola Styles, DC Yannick Clarke

London

1972. December.

The house looked remarkably ordinary. It was exemplary in its dullness. Clarke grimaced at it, sighed, and looked to Styles. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You never know, it might be more interesting than you expect,” Styles said, bright and optimistic as ever. It had been several months and he hadn’t decided whether it was endearing or annoying. Most probably both, at the same time. Still, he couldn’t deny that her enthusiasm made coming to work slightly more tolerable.

They walked up the short driveway, a strip of path sandwiched between patchy grass, mostly mud and leaf mulch. It was a cold December morning, Christmas decorations still visible in windows. Clarke hated the pause before the new year; the strange week that didn’t quite exist, where news got lost and everybody took a breath before the plunge. His job never stopped, because criminals never stopped. Bad guys don’t stop being bad guys because it’s a national holiday.

The door was wood and solid, his knock eliciting a chunky thunk. “If this is another regular case that’s been passed over to us for no reason…”

Styles looked up from the path at where he stood on the doorstep. “Does this happen a lot?”

“I’m surprised it’s not happened to you already,” Clarke said. “Used to get it a lot with Callihan. And before then. When the regulars can’t be bothered, they sling it our way at the slightest excuse.”

The door opened, revealing a woman in her mid-forties. She was wearing no make-up and looked as if she’d had a rough few nights. “Yes?”

“Mrs Carlisle?” Clarke held up his ID. “Detective Clarke and Styles, we’re from the SDC. Here about your break-in.”

“Oh! The experts! Please, do come in. I’ve just made a pot of tea.”

Clarke raised his eyebrows at Styles and entered the house, the inside of which was a singular beige, staircase and living room and kitchen and understairs cupboard all precisely where one might expect them to be.

“My husband is at work,” the woman explained, “even despite everything, they wouldn’t give him any time off. Disgraceful. Here—” She poured them both a cup of tea, then gestured at them to be seated. “I’m so pleased you’re here. It really is quite awful how often these foreigners just get away with this sort of thing. It’s very reassuring to know that we’ve got the best people looking after us.”

“Thank you, Mrs Carlisle. We have some questions to begin with.” Clarke nodded, sipped his tea and managed to suppress his immediate reaction to its lack of flavour.

Styles took out a notepad and pen. “Mrs Carlisle, can you tell us exactly what happened two nights ago?”

“Of course, of course.” She took a breath, composed herself, and clasped her fingers in front of her on the table. “I woke up in the night, it was just after two. I don’t always sleep well these days. I came downstairs for a glass of water and that’s when I found her.”

“An intruder?”

“Yes, in the living room, rifling through our papers, through the drawers. Looking for anything valuable.”

“Did you recognise them? Were they known to you?”

“What? No, of course not. We don’t socialise with their type. No, it was immediately obvious to me what she was. Those pointy ears don’t leave any doubt, do they? I always think how fortunate we are that they’re so easy to spot. Imagine if they didn’t have pointy ears - they could look just like us! Imagine that. Well, other than the ones with peculiar skin colours, of course. They will never be able to blend in, will they?” She chuckled to herself, as if she’d just come up with an amusing witticism.

Styles scribbled some notes. “What happened then?”

“Well, I screamed the house down, of course, and Gordon came running down the stairs. The girl - she was quite young, I’d say, although they do all look quite young, don’t they? They don’t age the same as us. Well, she darted past us and out the back door, then disappeared over the fence.”

“Was anything taken?”

“Not that we’ve found. I think we interrupted her before she could find anything of worth.”

Gently pushing his cup and saucer away, Clarke cleared his throat. “Was there any magic involved in the break-in?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Any magic, Mrs Carlisle. Perhaps an illusion to mask the intruder’s appearance.”

“Well, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so,” Clarke said, nodding. “And did you see any illegal cross-dimensional technology used in the break-in? By which I mean enchanted devices for lock-picking, or drone tech from Max-Earth. That sort of thing.”

“I don’t believe so.”

“I see.”

The questioning went on for another twenty minutes. Styles took photographs at the rear door and in the garden. The home owner gave a description of the intruder, which didn’t amount to much more than ‘pointy ears’.

Clarke nodded his thanks to Mrs Carlisle as she closed the front door behind them. Styles glanced at him and he rolled his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, stomping away from the house. “Uniformed police get even the slightest whiff of a Palinese resident and they call us in. There’s nothing dimensional about this. The intruder might be an illegal, I suppose, but even that’s supposition. It’s a standard breaking and entering. But because it’s an aen’fa they immediately pick up the phone and hand it over to us. It’s lazy. Those lazy bastards over at Scotland Yard, who can’t be bothered to do their jobs and palm it off to us suckers. We have a specific remit. And it’s not ‘round up anyone who looks funny.’”

“You seem particularly cheerful today, Yannick,” Styles said, grinning lopsidedly.

“Mhm,” he muttered. “It’s five months to the day since Callihan was killed. I’m feeling a bit raw. Sorry, Styles.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” she said, putting a hand on his back for a moment. “This is indeed a bullshit case. Any chance we can slide it back across town?”

“You’re going to have to put a penny in the swear jar, now.”

“There’s never any space in it.”

“That’s because everything is fucking shit.”

Kaminski looked up at the house. Weird to think that Callihan had lived here, but he was only visiting after the man was dead. It looked like a nice place, unusually narrow with three floors. It was modern, probably influenced by Max-Earth design, smooth and white and looking like a slightly alien version of something you might see on a Greek island.

Bakker had put thoughts into his head. Thoughts he didn’t enjoy having there, but which he couldn’t get rid of until he’d done something about them. There was something rotten about Callihan’s death. It hadn’t been a random, unfortunate encounter with a drugged-up koth. Bakker had chosen to bring Kaminski in on it, which was a gesture of trust that he hadn’t expected. Kaminski had always regarded Bakker as a dull, process-obsessed desk-bound nerd. Boring to a fault, family and two kids, typical career police, always focused on results rather than people. At least, that’s how he’d had him pegged. Or maybe that obsessive attention to detail is how he was able to sniff out that something was wrong.

If he needed Kaminski to be his bloodhound, then so be it. Kaminski was glad to play the part, to get the job done. Callihan had been a good cop, a good detective. Would probably have gone on to be a great one. Moreover, he was a decent man. Not many of those around any more.

He pressed the doorbell and heard the buzzer within. There was the muffled padding of footsteps, then the door opened to reveal the strikingly beautiful woman that had been at Callihan’s funeral. Zara, his fiancé. Why the hell had John been cheating on her?

“Hi Zara, I’m Zoltan Kaminski. I’m a detective with the SDC. I worked with John. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions, talk to you about what John was working on.”

Zara looked at him from beneath a scowl. “Really? Today?”

Frowning, he mentally checked the date. Shit. Bad timing.

“Whatever,” she said, turning away and leaving the door open. “I remember you from the funeral. Come in. Let’s get this over with.”