“So. What have we learned?” Mr. Gibson leaned back in his transparent chair and waited while Wendy got her ducks in a row.
Another Friday, another high-security meeting in HiveCo Secure Briefing Room C. After the week’s frantic beginning—when FlavrsMart Branch 322 went critical and she’d tried to arrest Adrian Hewitt—she’d barely had time to catch her breath since Eve Starkey’s little flying visit to Castle Skaro. But there had come a reckoning, starting with a stiffly formal police interview. They eventually decided not to charge her with anything: their attitude improved drastically when they realized that Mr. Hewitt’s latest collection of victims included not only not de-emphasized persons but corporate board members, and that Captain Colossal and the Blue Queen had given statements backing up Wendy’s account.
But that had only been the beginning.
“It’s a fucking nightmare,” Wendy finally admitted.
“Right.” Gibson had the patience of a born interrogator: she couldn’t imagine he wasn’t itching to dive in with leading questions, but he somehow gave no sign of it.
“From the top.” She sighed. Her right wrist ached from mousing through forms, and she’d swear she had monitor burn-in on her retinas from typing up reports. “Our de-emphasized persons were being dismantled on the loading bay at Branch 322, using a pilot project designed to produce mechanically recycled meat products from carcasses delivered straight from the abattoir. Supply-chain shitbaggery. Mr. Hewitt, the meat printer maintenance guy, had a quota to hit and was missing it until he found a dead homeless person. Then—” this was all in Ade’s notarized confession—“the regional HR chief, one Jennifer Henderson, noticed. She formalized the process. She also roped Mr. Hewitt into her church, one of the illegal mystery cults. So far so good.”
“Tell me about the cult connection.”
“The Cult of the Mute Poet, led—until lately—by one Rupert de Montfort Bigge.” Gibson winced, his poker face slipping. “The same Mr. de Montfort Bigge who was moving to take over FlavrsMart, a takeover I might add which was completed this week by Eve Starkey, who you might remember.” Another palpable hit. “Big company, the Bigge Organization, often the left hand doesn’t know who the right hand is jerking off, that kind of thing. Eve’s no friend of the cult so she has been extremely forthcoming in sharing information for purposes of spring cleaning. This led us to discover a connection between the cult and the former Chief Inspector—no, he made Superintendent before he was invited to resign—Jack Barrett, MD of the Wilde Corporation, named after the eighteenth century’s most notorious crook. And Barrett turns out to have been another fucking cultist, on the Bigge payroll.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Gibson muttered under his breath. “Please excuse me, do carry on.”
Wendy shrugged. “What can I say? Eve Starkey is no friend of the Cult of the Mute Poet, or of the late and definitely not lamented Mr. Barrett, or the equally dead Jennifer Henderson—oh, the Home Office supes at the scene swear blind that it was self-defense and she gutted herself with her own sacrificial knife—did I mention that Ms. Starkey’s personal security team had been infiltrated by the cult, and a bunch of them tried to bump her off before the raid? It’s all in my written report.”
“Oh, what a tangled skein of yarn we weave.” Gibson leaned back in his chair. “What’s your preferred summary?”
“What?” Wendy blinked, taken aback. “The original mission was a success, I’d say, wouldn’t you?” Gibson nodded reluctantly. “There’s one less serial killer walking free today, and some closure for his victims’ families—even the ones the New Management threw away. Whatever the cultists wanted with a supermarket—” her emphasis was studied: some things were not good to speak of openly, even in a maximum security briefing room—“they lost it, and there’s a woman with blood in her eye in charge of the parent company right now who is about to hire us to help her clean house. And I found you another transhuman hire, if Amy passes vetting?” Despite her gathering headache, Wendy did her best to sound cheery and upbeat at the end. Plz can has headhunting bonus?
“Nothing about the planned mass murder,” Gibson noted.
“It’s in the appendices.” Wendy tapped her fat ring binder. The surviving FlavrsMart board members had been more than happy to describe their nightmarish meeting with Ms. Henderson, and her laptop had survived, complete with a very incriminating PowerPoint presentation. Wendy had included a full transcript of their interviews, aside from the emotional outbursts and uncontrollable sobbing. “The New Management dodged a bullet—or we did.”
“The Wilde Corporation with mincemeat golems and a mass murder line to keep them resupplied doesn’t bear thinking about,” Gibson mused. “SO15 were not unreasonably grateful for our heads-up,” he added, fixing her with a knowing look. “So. What’s not in the report?”
“Motivation.” Wendy slumped in her chair. “According to the witnesses, Barrett and Henderson were trying to perform some sort of ritual powered by human sacrifice with the goal of ‘bringing back’ Mr. de Montfort Bigge from wherever he’s gone.” Gibson swore. “Eve ad—no, she didn’t admit: she merely didn’t deny—that Rupert became, uh, misplaced, during the earlier incident.” Her eyelid twitched rapidly. “Misplaced is not the same as dead, and his attempt to retrieve a certain missing necromantic manuscript did not necessarily fail. He’s in the wind, and while Ms. Starkey is working as fast as possible to take full control over the Bigge Organization and purge it of cultists, she’s got her work cut out.”
Gibson sat and stared at her for a minute, but all she could do by way of response was shrug.
Finally he sighed. “Right, well, happy joy. I’ll read this and get back to you if I need any changes. You’ll probably need to give evidence at Hewitt’s trial. I’m going to have to brief very important people about this mess, and I am not looking forward to it, I can tell you.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be: it’s not your fault.” He took another deep breath. “But He is not going to be happy.”
“He? Our fearless leader? The CEO?”
“His Dread Majesty, the Black Pharaoh.” Gibson stood up to leave, her report tucked under his arm. “Wish us both luck, Deere, because when this bucket of shit hits the fan, we’re going to need it.”
Mary came to wearing a titanium-reinforced straitjacket, chained to the wall of a tiled room in the back of a police station. Stainless steel razor-nails and drill-bit bones weren’t much use if she couldn’t move a millimeter. Every muscle and joint ached. The presence of a corner sluice and a drain in the middle of the floor did not fill her with good cheer.
“Do you know what Mr. Barrett wanted our children for, Mary?”
“I, I can’t—I don’t know—he didn’t tell me!—He said he wanted me to look after them, take them on a magical mystery tour for a week, then bring them back. Said it was to discredit you. On TV, make you look weak. But they’re a real handful and I asked for help and he, he changed his mind and called me back to London. Said he had a safe house, not that he wanted to sacrifice them. I would never”—she licked her lips nervously—“Is he really dead?”
“He was dead before we got there.” Mr. Banks sounded disappointed. “Body was moving, nobody home. At least, nobody human.”
“Good,” Mary said automatically.
“No, it means we don’t get to ask him questions.” Mr. Banks glowered at her accusingly. “There’s a lot of mana in a human sacrifice. Loads of it in a transhuman one. Our new friend Ms. Starkey is being very helpful, clearing up that nest of cultists an’ all. But there are loose ends.”
“Did you search his office? We had a, an altercation there, before I phoned you.”
“That’s a good question. I’m going to find out if anyone did. Don’t go anywhere.” Trudy Banks stalked out of the room.
“What are you going to do with me?” Mary asked the silence when it became unbearable.
“Well, that depends on you,” said Mr. Banks. He sounded thoughtful. “I’m a civilized man: I believe in the rule of law—the New Management’s law admittedly, they’re a bit harsh but that’s tradition for you. If you ’ad hurt my children, I’d ’ave seen you in the dock at the Old Bailey.” In front of a hanging judge, or worse.
Mary tried to shake her head. “I’d never hurt children,” she insisted.
“Well, they’re safe and sound and happy now, but Trudy is still a bit steamed about things. So let me tell you what I think. I’ll cut you a deal.” He paused. “Your dad gets a bed in a hospital, and you get a bed in our attic. Nanny. Your dad’s care will depend on how well you do your job, and just in case you get any ideas, I gather they’re trialling ankle tags with remote-control bombs these days. Or maybe collars? I don’t know, it’s not my department. Anyway, as long as the kids are all right, as long as nobody tries to kidnap and sacrifice them again, and if you do your job right, nobody needs to get hanged, drawn, and quartered—or have their head exploded.”
Mary closed her eye—the one that wasn’t already swollen shut and bloodshot. “You want me to be their nanny?” The prospect was marginally less appalling than a slow public execution. “After everything?”
Captain Colossal shrugged. “You’re the only one who lasted more than twenty-four hours without calling me and Trudy for help, and the kids seem to like you. The Home Office policy group is talking about reintroducing indentured servitude for minor offenses: I think you could be part of the pilot project, don’t you? Ten years’ hard labor wearing a collar bomb might begin to repay your debt to society—and by society I mean the Banks family.”
The cell door opened again. It was the Blue Queen. “It seems nobody reported it,” she said, regarding Mary with a sour expression. “So I guess we’ll have to raise a search warrant.”
The Captain’s phone rang. “Hello?” he said. “Ms. Starkey? Really? Yes, we’ll be over as soon as possible.” He ended the call and stood up. “Ms. Starkey is available for an interview right now, it seems. And she’s got her minions, all lined up in a row for us. We’ll get to the bottom of this for sure: the game’s afoot!” He smirked at Mary. “Have a think about my offer—I’ll be back after we’ve taken care of business. Don’t go anywhere…”