A group of boys were pouring over the local paper, gasping as they read the article. ‘Local Boy Jailed For Armed Robbery.’
Reminiscing, the boys thought back to their school days. Owen had always been a chancer. Selling cigarettes to anyone behind the bike shed for tuppence for one, nicking them from his brothers’ hoard in the shed. He unscrewed the clasp on the door, bypassing the padlock put on after an unfortunate incident with some mushrooms.
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Two words sprang to mind. Fat Chance. What were the odds on a crime scene being this neat? The victim, a message written in his own blood, and the murder weapon all within a few yards of each other. My gut told me something was wrong.
The boys in blue were happy enough to sign off on it. Even though the accused had a cast iron alibi, but I smelt a rat.
I went over the evidence again. There was only one fatal blow to the victim’s head. He’d have been dead before he hit the floor. The baseball bat had been wiped clean. The question was how could a dead man write his killer’s name in his own blood?
“Follow the money”, my instincts shouted. “Who was set to gain by this murder?”
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“Go,” Mother whispers, “you’re our last chance.”
I stand, confused, as she presses an activation key into my right hand, then runs along the corridor towards my father and the mob pressing against the hangar’s blast doors.
*
We’ve been spacers all our lives, living on the margins of existence. Trading goods wherever we can make credits, salvaging wreckage, fighting off pirates and raiders. The Federal Planetary Government doesn’t hold much sway out in the void, even though they’re becoming more authoritarian and imperialistic on the inhabited worlds. Rebellious types from beat poets to guerrilla militias had been crushed mercilessly according to rumour, but Father had dismissed the hearsay with a wave of his hand.
“No matter to us, girlie,” he’d said. “Go help your mother with the hull repairs.”
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Errol was reprising the success of the promotional video for the new intake of apprentices.
Marius’s erstwhile line-manager cum PR guru had stagnated whilst he, the star ascendant, rose… and then kept rising. Press releases, talk show interviews, the occasional drip feeding of the “facts” surrounding his new boss’s meteoric elevation, – Neurodiverse Apprentice of the Year to CEO of Brigham Enviro-Solutions, – were worlds Errol appeared supremely comfortable in.
“Premise. Humankind is imprisoned by the physical, physiological, and cognitive limitations of the body – limitations that BES’s programme of human enhancement has overcome, channelled, mastered.” Errol was on a roll.
“Part 1. The application of biomedical engineering principles to the ‘physical’ biology of the nervous system, monitoring the brain’s chatter through micro-electrodes, identifying somebody’s motor intent, then how the brain encodes behaviour. Somebody please identify yourself ” Marius stood to polite applause.
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We had a game where we would set up prompts and build stories together, sometimes wild, crazy stories. ‘It could so easily have been me….’ was one opener and
complicated, fantasy travel plans was another favourite. It made us laugh, and the dafter, the better. In fact we enjoyed doing most things together and even doing nothing together was better than doing nothing separately.
The ‘easily have been me’ one was a rich vat of story opportunities. We often returned to it.
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Yet another interview, let’s hope I get the job this time. I think this is the eighth or ninth job I’ve gone for. OK, I know I wasn’t qualified for some like the nanny’s job, but they could have given me a chance.
Why do they always keep you waiting? Sometimes I think they do it on purpose just to make you nervous, but today I’ve taken one of my mother’s diazepam, so I’m not fazed. The other two waiting look very la-di-da but a little nervous. One keeps dashing back and forth to the loo, while the other one is twisting her hands. You’d think she was on her way to the gallows. I think they have realised that I’m the obvious choice.
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In the stroke ward were a dentist, a heavy-metal bass player, an underwater welder, a politician, and Nat Wharton, bigshot drug dealer, whose bed was surrounded by a posse of gun-toting cops, each of them as large as a truck laden with opium.
The bass player didn’t know if she was in Carnegie Hall or a hall of mirrors. She listened to the faint boom ba boom of her hapless heart, trying to detect the backbeat and ascertain if the instrument was in four-four time.
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‘Aspen?’ Bill spat out the letter ‘p’ like it was a bitter pill. ‘What sort of name is that?’
I stroked my swollen abdomen and gazed out the window for added wistfulness. ‘Mum would have loved it.’
‘Hazel still rules our lives from beyond the grave,’ he muttered into his tea.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I stood up, losing my balance. In an instant he was easing me back onto the sofa, my vulnerability softening him.
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Harry stood in the doorway, his jackdaw black suit hugging him like a second skin, a bunch of flowers dangling from almost limp fingers.
Two nights away. A conference in Bournemouth. Thirty blokes getting drunk and talking about writing down expenses. From day one, he just wanted to get home to his wife, Sarah. He spoke to her last night in the casual terms of long familiarity.
“Love you.”
“Love you, three.”
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“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Martha laughed “but first, close your eyes.”
What was this little surprise? Martha would probably hold up a deformed jumper, which she had knitted over many nights, and Chris would force herself to wear the itchy ill-fitting thing with a “Oh it’s just what I wanted!” kind of smile. That was typical Martha. A trait Chris still found rather charming.
Her birthday surprise as it turned out was much more alarming, for as Chris sat cross legged upon her lavender sofa, she felt the warm sensation of something soft pressing against her lips. Her eyes bolted open to find Martha, her BFF, kissing her.
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