Читать книгу She Demons - Donald J. Hauka - Страница 6

Chapter One

It was the time of Diwali, the festival of light and release, but the corner of Main and Terminal was still a prisoner to darkness. The intersection marks the social fault line that divides the city of Vancouver between east and west, poor and rich. A stone’s throw west of the corner the futuristic dome of Science World glitters under its metallic, spiderweb frame, studded with glowing, blue gems. Beyond lays False Creek with its sailboats and little docks: a swimming pool for the privileged whose condos line its banks. On this overcast morning, the waters sat still, sullen, barely rippled in the wind — blue grey in the rain.

To the east, achingly close to this beauty, is The Corner: the wine-soaked, refuse-strewn intersection where the street people scrabble for a slow death. They are Leonard Cohen’s children, leaning out for love amid the garbage and flowers, looking for their mother in a bottle, their father in a needle, sucking in forgetfulness, transforming a filthy alley or a bus station washroom cubicle into the shores of Lotophagia.

It is the turf of the squeegee kids. “Kids,” they call them, although they can be thirty, or forty, even fifty years old, and look as ancient and gnarled as desert trees. Today, as every day, they were up early to greet the rush hour traffic, stiff limbs and aching muscles moving mechanically, like a medieval clock tower’s figures, working to the rhythm of the traffic lights. Green. Hustle the westbound lanes, walk between the lines of cars, looking left, looking right, hoping for the nod or smile of agreement. Amber. Wipe the windshield. Quick, quick. Take the money, try to smile. Red. Cut across the four lanes that run like asphalt veins into the city. Face the east and a fitful, rising sun glimpsed through ragged clouds. Green. Walk down the line of cars, looking left, looking right….

On the east side of Main Street, two young people, a boy and a girl, were waiting for the light to change, watching the squeegee kids weaving through the BMWs, SUVs, and compacts. At a glance you could tell they didn’t belong — not yet. Their clothes were too clean, too new. Value Village shoppers by choice, not necessity. The boy, Andy, was excited.

“It’s going to be so cool,” he said for the hundredth time that morning. “The Magus totally rocks.”

The girl, Sam, was slightly older. Teenagers, she thought, but not unkindly. Andy had a gleam in his eyes that lit up his brown, lean face. He was, she considered, an ideal candidate for the task ahead of him, at least physically. In his late teens, Andy was well-built. But his mind needed training. The camp would see to that. The camp and Arnie, Sam grinned.

“Focus on what we have to do now,” she urged him as they crossed the avenue, the sole pedestrians not out hustling for change. “Service before reward.”

“Oh yeah, ’course,” said Andy. “Present moment.”

On the other side of the street they came to the park in front of the bus station. It was dotted by overgrown maples, aged and diseased, losing their leaves in the late autumn, dropping withered limbs that littered the thinning, ragged lawn. Andy glanced over at them and felt his stomach constrict. Ragged bundles like discarded dolls — the junkies, the winos, the insane — were sprawled under every tree. Condos for the crazies. Nothing in Andy’s past had prepared him for this and he was still unused to it. He looked up at Sam, guilty, but her hard, blue eyes were staring to the right. She stopped abruptly.

“Thad? Thad?” she called out.

Andy followed her gaze. In the middle of the park, under the lone oak tree that was its centrepiece, a hooded figure, sitting cross-legged, immovable, like Buddha. Sam started across the lawn towards him.

“You’re not going to go over there!” cried Andy, unable to hide the disgust in his voice.

“He’s a friend!” Sam snapped, looking carefully at the ground in front of her, scanning for used needles, broken glass, the unidentifiable.

Andy started after Sam, trying hard to evoke the compassion that was at the heart of the Magus’s teaching. But it was difficult, looking at this dirty young man dressed in a faded grey kangaroo sweater, face hardly visible, to feel pity or remind himself that this figure contained a spark of the divine within. Sam stood behind Thad now, calling to him as Andy approached.

“Thad. You okay?”

Probably on junk, thought Andy. What was Sam doing associating with a junkie? A frown creased her smooth, white face as she knelt down beside the figure.

“Hey, Thad? Thought you kicked. Weren’t workin’ this scene anymore.”

Silence. Andy stood beside Sam. He was about to politely suggest that they were going to be late if they wasted much more time here when Sam made one last attempt to get through to her friend.

“Thad?”

Sam grabbed the figure by the shoulders and gave him a shake. Thad’s head emerged from his hood, tumbled neatly off his shoulders, described a slow ellipse, and landed, staring straight up, in his lap. Andy’s eyes were wide, involuntarily taking in every detail of Thad’s face, from the flat, lifeless look of his eyes to the horrific cuts tracing his cheeks. Sam was still holding Thad’s shoulders, looking down, unbelieving, at the familiar face below. For a moment, there was absolute silence filling Andy’s ears: no sound of cars or ghetto blasters. The world revolved around the axis of the tree and The Corner fell away, insignificant, meaningless in the face of this obscenity. Then Sam screamed. The world returned: a world full of angry horns and screaming people. And police cars. Andy, obeying his ancient instincts, fled, heedless of the perils underfoot, running, running, running, still carrying the horror before him.

* * *

“These are not mere playthings we are selling here, my friend. They are a little girl’s dreams.”

The dream in question sat cradled tenderly in Hakeem Jinnah’s slender brown hands. Nearly two feet tall, she wore a beautiful wedding sari and looked remarkably like a Barbie doll, save that her skin was like coffee and there was a chocolate dot on her forehead. Encased in glass, she was gorgeous, a vision. This was lost on the person on the other end of the phone.

“Listen buddy,” said Jinnah wriggling his shoulder and chin to get a better grip on the receiver. “These are going to be big sellers, I’m telling you … Okay. Your loss. Sonofabitch!”

Jinnah carefully placed the glass-cased doll back down on his desk so he could slam the phone down with both hands. Around him, the newsroom droned sluggishly, the ambient noise scarcely louder than the fluorescent lighting’s incessant hum. It was early yet. Deadline was too far away to give anyone but the editor a sense of urgency. It was the perfect morning to mix a little personal business with the pleasure Jinnah took in his work as crime reporter for the Vancouver Tribune. He grabbed his contact book and flipped petulantly through its pages while reaching for his coffee. He sipped. Sickeningly sweet. Four creams and four sugars mixed with just a soupçon of coffee. Perfect.

“What’s with the doll?”

Jinnah, nervous by nature, jumped, nearly spilling coffee all over his desk. He spun his chair around to look at the attractive woman in her early twenties standing over him, her red hair glowing faintly like a halo in a stray beam of sunlight that had somehow pierced the gloom. Crystal Wagner, the city desk clerk had, as usual, made her question sound like a derogatory remark. No mere clerk was worthy of giving Jinnah pulmonary embolism. Thanks to Allah, it wasn’t anyone important like that asshole editor, Whiteman. Jinnah took a breath, adjusted his glasses and switched gears from affronted malingerer to frustrated philanderer.

“Ah, Mademoiselle,” he growled in a voice as dark, low, and sweet as molasses. “You have come to invest, perhaps? Or for something else?”

Crystal kept her cynical expression intact. Jinnah was an “NBT” — Nothing But Talk. Used to Jinnah’s routine where he affected a French accent, she kept her face a sardonic study. “Skip the Pepé Le Pew act, Hakeem. You trying to get rich again?”

“Ah, ze lady is playing hard to get,” said Jinnah, taking her hand. “Come, be my partner, and with our riches ve will live in Zanzibar, in splendour.”

“I thought you were selling little girls’ dreams, not adolescent boys’ fantasies.”

“Let me show you the reality,” purred Jinnah, running his hand the length of her arm.

Crystal sighed. If she protested and moved away, Jinnah was likely to start unbuttoning his shirt and show her his “African rug.” If she didn’t, he’d probably do the same thing. She was rescued by an unlikely Lancelot.

“Really, Hakeem. There is such a thing as sexual harassment!”

Jinnah tore his unwilling eyes away from Crystal’s fair, freckle-flecked skin and glanced over at the intruder. Ronald Sanderson, his desk mate, was a typical west coaster. Politically correct to a fault. Courteous. Would say “Sorry!” to a mugger. He snorted. “Ronald, Ronald! There is nothing sexual going on here. This is purely platonic harassment.”

“You can’t just grab your fellow employees and start pawing them,” said Sanderson sternly, reminding Jinnah of a particularly prissy private school prefect.

“My arm was possessed by demons — I didn’t do it on paw-pose,” Jinnah grinned. “Perhaps this is supernatural harassment, hmm?”

“Oh, please,” said Crystal, making no effort to extricate her extremities from Jinnah’s clutches.

“Look, don’t you have any work to do, Hakeem?”

“Oh, ho!” crowed Jinnah. “And just what is your contribution to the Daily Miracle going to be today, hmm? Another gripping tale of death by mould?”

Sanderson flushed red. Jinnah always belittled his stories. It was part of the unending feud between general assignment reporters like Ronald, who had to cover everything and anything under the sun, and beat reporters like Hakeem, who were specialists. Jinnah was referring to Sanderson’s front page story, describing how exposure to a rare form of fungus had killed a Vancouver Island man.

“You’re just jealous because my fungus victim was the line story,” Sanderson said crossly.

“Ronald, Ronald. If only you had listened to my advice, it would have been a much better story.”

“Like hell! I will not have you trivializing that poor man’s death!”

“You yourself said the victim was full of life and an all around good fellow,” Jinnah chided. “Think of the headline: ‘Fungi Kills Fun Guy!’ You’d be famous by now. But you will never drink at the fountain of fame, for you never take my advice.”

Jinnah braced himself for another self-righteous lecture, but Sanderson had abruptly abandoned his attempt to defend his integrity and Crystal’s honour. He was now shamelessly ogling a little girl’s dreams and his eyes had narrowed in what Jinnah would have considered a shrewd and calculating manner had it been anyone else.

“Nice doll, Jinnah,” said Sanderson, trying hard to sound nonchalant. “How much you selling them for?”

Jinnah was so astonished that he released Crystal’s hand. This was totally unlike Sanderson. He’d expected a rebuke from him for conducting personal business on company time, not interest in his product line. His inherent instincts tingling, Jinnah grabbed the doll, hugging it protectively. “She’s not for sale, Ronald!”

Crystal’s laugh was hard, staccato. “Liar! You and your cousin Sanjit have bought over a thousand of these Barbies —”

“Not Barbies, Babjis,” Jinnah corrected her. “They’re for personal use. Not for sale.”

Slightly bewildered, Sanderson looked over to Crystal in a mute appeal for explanation.

She obliged. “He’s trying to corner the North American market. Says Indo-girls here haven’t had a decent non-white role model since Vanessa Williams —”

“I meant Michelle Obama!” Jinnah cried, hating how Crystal made him look dated.

“But how much?” demanded Sanderson.

“You wanna know the price, go to Jinnah’s website. They’re about $39.95 — right, Hakeem?”

“In U.S. funds,” said Jinnah stiffly, twisting around and placing the Babji doll under his desk. “Sorry, Ronald. No infidels need apply.”

Sanderson’s egalitarian protests were pre-empted by a bellow from city desk. Sanderson leapt for his desk. Crystal drifted indifferently towards the coffee machine, leaving Jinnah alone to face the considerable wrath of Nicole “Frosty” Frost, senior assistant city editor in charge of poking indolent crime reporters with a sharp stick.

“You are supposed to be making calls, not flogging dolls.”

Jinnah looked at Frosty with a perfectly calm, totally professional exterior. His intestinal tract, however, was being savaged by Sanderson’s deadly fungi. Frosty was in her fifties and the original tough broad. Before being promoted to middle management she’d worked every beat worth having on the Trib while out drinking and out swearing her male colleagues. Now she ran city desk with an iron hand and an enlarged liver, and had everyone’s respect or their fear. She had been Jinnah’s mentor when he had arrived at the paper and there was a genuine affection between them. But at the moment, Frosty looked like one of those angry prophets in the Old Testament whom she was fond of quoting. Since Jinnah was an Ismaili Muslim he didn’t give a moment’s thought to whether he was supposed to be Solomon or Rehoboam.

“Frosty. You’re looking ravishing this morning! What can I do for you?”

“Some work!” snapped Frosty and winced at her own volume. “You haven’t filed a story in two days. Don’t make it three.”

“It’s ridiculously early,” protested Jinnah. “I shall rise again on the third day. Don’t worry — News God will provide.”

Despite her foul mood and her habitual hangover, Frosty almost smiled at this. Jinnah must be really desperate to invoke the name of the fickle deity quietly worshipped by all good news reporters.

“News God helps those who help themselves by doing cop checks,” she growled.

Jinnah was about to take a cheap shot, something about scotch and corn flakes, when, as if in answer to the invocation of the Name, his telephone rang. He looked at the call display and smiled. Thanks to Allah. It wasn’t that damned doll supplier wondering where his money was. Jinnah snatched up the receiver as Frosty stood, arms crossed, making sure he wasn’t freelancing on company time. “Y’ello, Craig.”

“Would it hurt you to address me as ‘Sergeant Graham, sir,’ just once in a while?”

Sergeant Craig Graham’s voice faded and surged over his cellphone. Jinnah grinned. Aside from being in a bad cell zone, Graham was sounding persecuted, and that usually meant he had something good. Graham was the closest thing Jinnah had to a friend on the Vancouver Police force. Frosty, satisfied Jinnah was not persisting in the sin of sloth, returned to her desk.

“Where the hell are you, Sergeant Graham, sir?” Jinnah yelled into his phone. “Outer Mongolia?”

“Close. Corner of Main and Terminal. Get your brown ass down here.”

“Is it good?”

“Spec-bloody-tacular.”

“Be there in five.”

“Bring a barf bag. It’s not pretty.”

Jinnah hung up. He grabbed his coat, notebook, and microcassette and called out to Frosty at city desk. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours with the front page story, Frosty,” he said smugly.

“Got a hot one?” chirped Sanderson from his desk.

Jinnah wasn’t fooled. Sanderson couldn’t get around him by appealing to his massive ego. Well, not all the way around him anyway.

“Yes. And while I’m gone, keep your filthy, white, effeminate hands off my Babjis.”

“I had no intentions —” sputtered Sanderson, but Jinnah cut him off.

“Remember, Ronald: News God is watching you.”

As he slammed out of the newsroom, Jinnah was delighted when Ronald actually looked involuntarily over his shoulder.

* * *

Jinnah walked down to the company parking lot and climbed into his van. His colleagues had dubbed it the “satellite-guided Love Machine” because, in a moment of weakness, Jinnah had tried to convince Crystal Wagner that he had a waterbed in the back. He didn’t, really; just a small fridge and a propane stove. He did, however, have a satellite guidance system, which was his prized possession. He loved seeing where he was on the digital map screen, plugging in coordinates, having the computer remind him, “You must turn right at the next intersection to reach your preset destination.” His son, Saleem, had helped him alter the system’s voice menu and now Jinnah could be prompted to change course by Ensign Sulu’s voice. But Jinnah didn’t need satellite guidance to reach Main and Terminal. It was all too familiar territory.

“Name of God,” Jinnah whistled when he reached The Corner.

Main and Terminal was a three-ring media circus, complete with freak show in the heart of the concrete jungle. A phalanx of TV camera crews, print and radio reporters, and photographers were pressed against the circle of yellow and black crime scene tape that protected the centre of the park from their advance. Wandering around the edge of this massive scrum were the drunks, the deinstitutionalized, and the druggies, displaced from their sleeping quarters, taking the opportunity to tell their life stories to the cameras and bum a little change. Their ranks were swollen by the squeegee kids, who had forsaken hustling to take in the spectacle.

But it was the third ring that caught Jinnah’s attention. About a dozen clean and sober youths dressed in white bomber jackets marched back and forth, carrying signs bearing slogans like “Repent!” and “Jesus Died for You.” All the while they and anyone else who cared to listen were being harangued by a white-haired man in his fifties, who looked like Elijah in a cheap suit, shouting through a megaphone. Jinnah groaned. He always did when the Reverend Peter Hobbes and his God Squad manifested.

Jinnah felt sorry for Graham. Investigating a murder was a tough job at the best of times, but how the hell was he going to work in this kind of zoo? He decided to park in the MacDonald’s lot a half block away. It was free, unlike the more secure pay parking at Science World across the street. But unless you had a good car alarm, you could find your tires slashed or your stereo gone if you tarried too long. Fortunately, Jinnah had rigged his alarm to let out an ear-bleeding shriek, followed by the booming voice of Lieutenant Worf crying, “Phasers on kill, Captain! Fire!” It was remarkably effective, in even the toughest neighbourhoods, and Jinnah left his van feeling only slightly uneasy about its well-being.

Crossing the street, he skirted the side of the scrum where Hobbes was berating the crowd. Jinnah had had more than one visit from the Reverend over the years. His very first week at the paper he’d made the mistake of writing an article about Hobbes’s unceasing campaign against Lionel Simons, a former shock-rocker turned cult leader. Hobbes claimed that Simons was really a Satanist. Lionel Simons was no saint, but you certainly couldn’t prove he was a Satanist. Not with his legal team. Jinnah still winced when he remembered the crawling retraction he’d had to write to avoid a lawsuit. He’d been wary of Hobbes ever since, but the Reverend was nothing if not dogged in his crusade against Simons, aka “The Rock Messiah!”

Jinnah squeezed through the crowd, taking care not to step in anything that would irreparably soil his new Gucci loafers. He peered past the tape into the centre of the crime scene and saw the sad ritual following a violent murder being performed by a full complement of death’s acolytes: the CSU guys in their white suits; the coroner, the only guy wearing street clothes besides Graham; uniforms, looking bored and apprehensive, holding the crowd back and taking considerable abuse from the street people. He caught Graham’s eye and waved.

Craig walked over to the edge of the tape. “About time, Hakeem.”

“Traffic was murder. Pun intended,” said Jinnah. “What’cha got, buddy?”

Graham looked pointedly at several street people who were standing against the tape beside Jinnah. “Beat it,” he said.

One, a short but muscular, bare-chested young man drinking a beer for his breakfast, glared belligerently. “Free country, man. Make us,” he said, mulish.

“Want me to check and see if there are any outstanding warrants for you and your pals?”

The dissipated muscleman snorted, belched, threw his beer can at Graham’s feet, and stalked off with his buddies. Jinnah and Graham had near privacy for their chat. Jinnah took out his notebook and looked at his contact expectantly.

Graham spoke in his clipped, curt manner. “One victim. Male, aged twenty. Name, Thad Golway.”

“So? What makes this special? Guys get knifed down here all the time,” said Jinnah.

“They don’t often get their heads severed, then placed carefully on their shoulders, Hakeem,” said Graham, a shade peevishly in Jinnah’s opinion.

“You’re kidding!”

“No. I figure he was killed somewhere else, cleaned up. Even dressed in fresh clothes. Then placed here, under a tree, with his kangaroo hood pulled over his head.”

Jinnah shuddered. His mind instantly tried to reconstruct the crime. He could see a Dark Figure bending over a kneeling Thad, a sword raised over his head. The blade flashed downwards and … Jinnah’s legendary weak stomach skipped the gruesome details. But he did imagine Main and Terminal at night. With everyone asleep or stoned, the Figure, having arranged Thad’s body to look as if he was sleeping, would stuff the body bag he’d carried the boy’s corpse in back into a knapsack and walk away, unquestioned, into the darkness. It was terrible.

“Sonofabitch,” said Jinnah. “Who found him?”

Graham pointed to a young woman sobbing uncontrollably a few metres from the tree, her face obscured by a Victim Services officer trying to calm her down. Good luck, thought Jinnah.

“She says she knows him. But that’s all I’ve been able to get out of her. She was with another kid. An Andy Gill. Know him?”

Jinnah shrugged, irked. “How should I know? There are thousands of Gills in the Indo-community, for God’s sake. Even after all these years, you still seem to think I know every damned person with brown skin in B.C.”

Before Graham could apologize, a strident, amplified voice suddenly sounded close behind them. Jinnah flinched.

“The wages of sin is death! But the gift of God is eternal life through Christ our Lord!” bawled the Reverend Peter Hobbes.

“Jesus, that guy!” cursed Graham. “I’ve already got a bastard of a headache!”

Jinnah shifted himself slightly so Graham was between him and Hobbes. The last thing he needed was to have Hobbes make a beeline for him and demand to be interviewed. He need not have worried. Graham grabbed Jinnah’s arm and swung him around. He started marching across the park towards the bus station.

“Come on, we need to talk.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing.”

Jinnah allowed himself to be led, a little concerned at Graham’s behaviour. He’d never seen him on edge like this before.

“I just wish that goddamn born-again would let me get on with my job,” the sergeant said vehemently.

“He means well,” said Jinnah. “He’s fought a lonely war on drugs for years —”

“Well, he’s losing!”

They stepped over the concrete curbing, which marked the edge of the bus station’s parking area, in silence. Jinnah ransacked his memory, trying to guess what was eating his friend. The violence of the murder? He’d seen worse — just. The kid’s age? Graham had handled cases involving infants. The macabre nature, maybe? It was, in a way, a ritualistic killing. Maybe that was it. Jinnah suddenly realized he had no idea what religion Graham was, or if indeed he had any. Graham took Jinnah over towards the deserted arrivals area and turned abruptly.

“Look, Jinnah, I gotta tell you something off the record.”

“Is that off the record as in, ‘Confirm it somewhere else and run with it’ off the record or ‘If this gets out I’ll kill you?’ off the record?” asked Jinnah.

“It’s ‘breathe a damn word and my careers over’ off the record.”

Jinnah whistled and closed his notebook as a show of good faith. This was serious. “Okay. My lips are sealed. So is my pen. And my keyboard.”

“It’s like this: Thad Golway was a good kid. He got caught up in the rave scene and started dealing. But he had a change of heart. Remember that bust I engineered down here last month?”

Jinnah nodded. It hadn’t been a front page key story. He’d managed to get a page top on five out of it. Twenty dealers, mostly squeegee kids, busted. More important, their supplier had been nailed and his operation shut down. A rare victory in the war on drugs.

“Well, Thad was one of my informants. He and two of his buddies, they helped me get the warrants.”

“Oh, shit,” said Jinnah with feeling. “Craig, I’m sorry.”

“It gets worse,” said Graham. “I wanted to put Thad into Witness Protection. Move him outta town with his two friends, right? Only they wouldn’t go. Dropped outta sight on their own. So now …” Graham trailed off.

Jinnah read his thoughts. “Now you have one dead and two missing, both possible targets — or victims. Right?”

Graham forced a wretched smile out of his facial muscles. “Yeah. Jinnah, about the informant angle — how long do you think I can keep it quiet?”

Jinnah did the math instantly in his head. “Think you can catch the killer in three days?”

“Why three days?”

“Simple, my friend. Day one, a brutal and macabre killing. Who would do such a thing, hmm? The standard, ‘Why did he have to die?’ story.”

“You mean user-key one.”

Jinnah ignored this slight. It was a standing joke around the cop shop. Jinnah only wrote three kinds of articles and did so with such a consistent formula that they were referred to as “User-key” stories. User-key one, “Why did he/she have to die?” Usually guaranteed the front page. And this was definitely front page material.

“Day two,” Jinnah continued. “Find the boy’s parents. His sweetheart. His high school teacher. Great TV clips. Did his parents know he was working for you, by the way?”

“Nice try, Hakeem,” said Graham. “No comment.”

“Day three: in the absence of any suspects, hmm? Where were the police while a body was being placed in plain view on one of Vancouver’s busiest street corner? One that has a history of drug deals and drug busts. You had to file an affidavit to get the warrant, right?”

“Of course,” said Graham. “But the informant’s names are severed from the document.”

“Won’t take long for someone to guess,” said Jinnah sadly. “Might even take less time if that bastard in traffic gets wind of it and leaks it to one of his pet reporters.”

Graham gave a little, disapproving cough. There was a certain corporal in the traffic section that made it his business to make his life misery. Graham suspected even Jinnah had likely been fed one or two tips by the son of a bitch over the years.

“Three days to catch the perp with dick all to go on. Not bloody likely, Hakeem.”

“Then what, Sergeant Graham, sir, do you propose?”

Graham eyed Jinnah warily. He was, he knew, playing with fire. But he had little option. Jinnah’s assessment of the media’s moods and appetites had been too brutally realistic and had corresponded too closely with his own suspicions.

“Look, if I can feed you stuff, exclusive, so the pack is busy chasing you, it’ll take ’em longer to start asking awkward questions, right?”

There was a pleading note in Graham’s voice that Jinnah didn’t like. It was usually his job to whine about getting an exclusive. He genuinely felt sorry for Craig. But it did not do to accept such a generous offer without a bit of unseemly haggling first. Pride would not allow it.

“I don’t know, Craig,” said Jinnah, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “A petty detail here, a petty detail there. That’s your usual idea of an exclusive.”

“I’m not talking about giving you what kind of clothes the kid was wearing when we found him,” said Graham irritably. “I mean good stuff. Juicy stuff.”

Jinnah took out his gold lighter and flicked its beautifully crafted wheel. He inhaled deeply. “Front page stuff?” he asked, the words entombed in a shroud of blue smoke.

Graham coughed and waved a hand in front of his face. “Look, Aikens already has the body. Go see him in an hour, give or take. I’ll tell him to give you a full briefing for once.”

Jinnah’s heart soared. A full briefing with Rex “Dr. Death” Aikens could keep him on the front page for a week, easily. Jinnah stuck out his hand. “You got a deal, buddy.”

They shook on it. On the walk back to the crime scene, Jinnah was already writing his story out loud, bouncing it off Graham. “It’s a murder with a message: Beware.”

“Yeah,” muttered Graham. “But who’s the message for?”

“Too bad he wasn’t found in a strip club.”

“What the hell difference does that make?”

“Craig, Craig — it’s one of the greatest headlines in journalism yore. ‘Headless Body Found in Topless Club.’ Great, hmm?”

“Charming.”

“I was thinking of something like: ‘Under the spreading oak tree, the village junkie stands — but not on his head.’”

“Real sensitive. His parents will love you.”

“They always end up loving Jinnah in the end, my friend….”

They almost made it back safely behind the tape, but just as they were a few metres shy, a TV reporter and her cameraman leaped out from behind a tree and barred their path.

“Sergeant Graham! Have you any suspects yet?”

Oh shit, thought Jinnah. Caitlin Bishop.

“I have no comment.”

Graham tried to brush past Caitlin, but she had positioned herself squarely between him and the tape. Jinnah felt a pang of conscience. He had taught Caitlin that trick. It seemed another lifetime ago that Caitlin had been a shy, mousy intern at the Tribune, being mentored by the great Jinnah-ji. She had talent and promise — ah, such promise! Jinnah sighed. Then she had thrown it all away for a job in television news. It only pained Jinnah slightly that she now made almost exactly twice as much as he did.

“Was he a dealer or a junkie?” Caitlin asked as Jinnah smiled politely at his former protegé.

“No comment.”

“Is this in any way linked to last month’s major bust down here?”

To Graham’s credit, he didn’t miss a beat. His “No comment” was in exactly the same tone as his previous utterances — which was something Jinnah hated. Unlike so many other cops, Graham never gave that dramatic pause that said “yes, but I can’t say so,” unless he wanted to.

“May I say I find that hard to believe?”

Part of Jinnah admitted that he would have made exactly the same comment. But the rest of him knew this woman was endangering his exclusive. He was about to say something when, fortunately, Graham was rescued by Constable Bains.

“Sergeant, we need you over here.”

Bains, one of Vancouver’s few Indo-Canadian policemen and built like a brick ashram, had lumbered up behind Caitlin and was politely but firmly leaning against her, prompting her to take a step back. Graham saw the crack of light and dove to safety without answering the last question.

Caitlin pouted for a second then turned her perfectly capped teeth on Jinnah. “Jinnah!” she said in a voice that was a pale imitation of Hakeem’s saccharin tones. “What were you and Craig talking about all by yourselves?”

Jinnah was not fooled by Caitlin’s studied coquetry for a moment. “He offered to buy me a one-way bus ticket out of town. Then released me on my own recognizance.”

“Very funny. Spill. What do you know?”

“TV has been very bad for your patience level. You know, you used to be so much more polite when you worked in print.”

Before Caitlin could reply, Jinnah turned and walked away.

“Hey. Where are you going?” she cried.

“I have a doctor’s appointment,” said Jinnah, blowing Vancouver’s premiere pit bull a kiss.

* * *

Rex Aikens had earned the sobriquet “Dr. Death” long before Jack Kevorkian came along, and came by it honestly. There were few ways of shuffling off the mortal coil (or having it shuffled off for you) that Aikens did not know of. His lab was as sterile as a double vasectomy and impeccably neat. But Jinnah always found the wide, white room with the gleaming stainless steel fixtures too cold, as if the Grim Reaper himself was putting a hand on his clammy skin. Nothing seemed to work against the chill; not wearing a sweater under his leather jacket, not even the warmth of Aikens himself, who, despite his profession as Vancouver’s top forensic pathologist, was a cheerful fellow.

“This is a day to mark on the calendar,” Aikens said, putting down the phone as Jinnah sat shivering on a stool. “I must go out and buy myself a lottery ticket.”

Jinnah smiled. He loved Aikens’s voice, which retained just a touch of the lilting Irish accent he’d largely left behind along with his youth in Dublin.

“It is indeed a rare day when we can speak frankly without worrying about what Those Who Work Above may hear,” agreed Jinnah.

“Those Who Work Above” was the code Jinnah and Aikens used to refer to the police, who worked in the upper storeys of the building where the forensic lab was located. Usually, they frowned on Aikens having these off the records with Jinnah. But Aikens found it useful talking things over with Hakeem. The reporter had a keen eye for detail and good instincts. Pity he was so damned squeamish about autopsy photos.

“Well,” said Aikens. “Where do you want me to start? I have but with a cursitory eye o’erglanced the victim.”

“Start with the cause of death, Rex.”

“Excellent question,” Aikens’s eyes gleamed behind his thick, black-framed glasses. “Would you believe me if I said beheading?”

“No,” said Jinnah. “Not unless the kid was so stoned that he was unconscious when the murderer did him.”

“Got it in one, old boy,” said Aikens. “Toxicology’s not in yet, but the poor lad shows every sign of having a sizable amount of heroin in his bloodstream. I think I should illustrate this over at the light table.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Rex!” groaned Jinnah. “I just ate.”

“Come come, Jinnah. I think I may have shown you worse.”

Jinnah reflected briefly on the lunches he had lost in the line of duty as he followed Aikens over to the light table, where a series of X-rays and photographs were hanging, all neatly marked “Golway, Thaddeus.” Jinnah squinted, feeling his stomach rebel at the sight. Aikens pointed to an X-ray of the boy’s severed head. Jinnah looked away.

“Now, now, my man,” Aikens’s triangular eyebrows were knit together in a frown, making them look like two twin, bushy peaks. “Observe and learn.”

Jinnah forced his eyes open and immediately regretted it. The sugar and cream-charged coffee churned and curdled in his stomach, desperately trying to escape. But he held it down, trying to focus on the pure mechanics of the murder and not the person. Not yet.

“A single, swift stroke with an extremely sharp, heavy blade. Unless I miss my guess, something akin to an executioner’s axe.”

“You’re kidding!”

Jinnah now had another grisly detail to add to his mental reconstruction. The Dark Figure now clutched a headsman’s axe.

“You’re saying this was an execution-style killing, Doc?”

“Yes, in a somewhat more medieval manner than we are accustomed to, Jinnah.”

Jinnah grunted. At the end of the day, did it matter whether it was by Rambo knife, ceremonial sword, or meat cleaver? A beheading was a beheading.

“Could it be a cult thing, hmm? A ritual slaying?”

Aikens frowned, sending white waves rippling up and across his pale forehead. “I want you to look very carefully at this next photograph. And if you are going to be ill, like the last time, you know where the sterile receptacle is.”

Jinnah knew where the stainless steel bucket was — right at the end of the table. He braced himself as Aikens carefully selected one of the photographs on the table’s flat surface and placed it on the shining upright wall of light in front of them.

“This is a photograph of the victim’s face. It will appear … reasonably unpleasant at first.”

Jinnah opened his eyes as fully as he dared. There were Thad Golway’s lifeless eyes, his reddish, matted hair. His mouth, open slightly, showing cracked, nicotine-stained teeth. But it was not these details that Jinnah found disturbing. It was the marks on Thad’s cheeks. At first, all he registered were the wounds. Someone had carved the kid’s cheeks with a knife. For a moment, he thought he would need the bucket, but he managed to keep his stomach under control.

“You will notice, Mister Jinnah, that the pattern of scarring is quite plainly visible. Which is extremely odd, don’t you think?”

Jinnah looked at Aikens, but his pale face gave nothing away. This was one of Aikens’s little quizzes. He made Jinnah think for his stories. It irritated him, but it took his mind of the dreadful sight before his eyes.

“Where’s the blood, Doc?”

Aikens smiled, framing his dark eyes with a latticework of wrinkles. “Spot on, my man. There was none. Someone carved the victim’s cheeks post mortem, then washed away the blood so his handiwork could be seen.”

“Name of God,” said Jinnah, sweating and wondering why he never thought to pop a tranquilizer before coming here.

“I used the word ‘carved’ deliberately, by the way,” Aikens continued. “Have you noticed the pattern?”

Jinnah stared as Aikens traced the design on Thad’s cheeks with a capped ballpoint pen. A crooked line ran vertically up either side, from chin to the top of the broad cheekbone. Cutting across the axis of these were three, wavy lines. They looked like a series of lopsided Ws: jagged crosses, macabre Christmas trees.

“Identical on both cheeks,” said Jinnah.

“Rather like trees, don’t you think?” said Aikens, voicing Jinnah’s thoughts.

Jinnah’s inherent instincts started to tingle. His stomach was forgotten. “Have you ever seen a signature like this before, Doc?”

“Not in my long service here in the first circle of hell, Jinnah,” said Aikens, a touch sadly. “It is not any known gang or cult sign that I can identify.”

Jinnah took out his notepad and made a sketch of the markings. He knew this was a breach of the usual protocol with Aikens: no attribution and no note taking. It had an immediate effect on Aikens, who began mopping his receding hairline with a linen handkerchief.

“Look, my man — do you think that’s wise?” he said, a shade nervously.

“Hey! Graham said a full briefing, didn’t he?”

“Indeed. Quite right.”

“Besides,” said Jinnah. “You want to know whose signature this is, hmm? Well, I’m pretty sure I know where to find out.”

“You do?” said Aikens querulously. “Pray, where?”

Jinnah snapped his notebook shut. God, he needed a cigarette. “The scene of the crime,” he said.

* * *

By the time Jinnah returned to Main and Terminal, the circus was breaking up. Most of the media had gone. So, mercifully, had the Reverend Hobbes. The CSU guys were finishing up. But the people who Jinnah wanted to talk to were there, of course. They lived there.

He looked at the small knots of people still hanging around the lawn. One was composed of emerging alcoholics, led by the bare-chested, well-muscled mule man who had challenged Graham. Another of older street people, chatting and leaning over the handles of their shopping carts the way people in the suburbs leaned over their fences to gossip. The third group was mostly younger people in faded and ripped jeans and T-shirts. Several were holding squeegees. Jinnah strolled up to them with what he thought was just the right mixture of casual coolness and understated authority.

“Gentlemen, ladies,” he said. “Making much money today?”

The half-dozen squeegee kids glared at Jinnah and fell silent.

“Did any of you know Thad?” asked Jinnah, keeping a verbal foot in the door.

A scrawny young man of about twenty, wearing a red bandanna that covered most of his long, greasy brown hair, turned to face Jinnah. A spokesman. Good. The rest watched as Red Bandanna challenged Jinnah.

“You a cop?” he demanded.

Jinnah laughed and fished his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. “Do I look like one?” he said, offering his cigarettes.

Red Bandanna looked at the package suspiciously, hesitating. “These regulars or Mother Nature?”

“Sadly, just tobacco,” said Jinnah.

“We live in hope, man.”

Red Bandanna took one. So did a very thin, pale young woman who Jinnah took to be his girlfriend. Jinnah lit both their cigarettes.

“Was Thad a squeegee kid?” he asked.

Red Bandanna scowled. “Why you wanna know? You’re not a cop. You an undertaker?”

“No, I’m Hakeem Jinnah, crime reporter for the Tribune.” Jinnah had waved a red flag in front of Red Bandanna, who had his soap box ready.

“Why don’t you assholes in the corporate media tell the truth about what’s happening down here instead of parroting the fucking fascist cops who are owned and operated by the global money men who are ruining our planet, huh?”

Jinnah kept his face carefully neutral. Just as long as they didn’t identify him as the author of last month’s piece of fascist police propaganda, he might just get something out of this. Simultaneously, he wondered if he could claim expenses for two cigarettes.

“We can’t tell the truth if you don’t talk to us, my friend. For instance, I assume most of my colleagues in the corporate media will refer to Thad as a street person or a junkie. Is he either?”

“Labels!” spat Red Bandanna’s girlfriend through skinny, magenta lips. “Cut-price tags to put on a person so you can write them off as no loss. What does it mean?”

This was a little too esoteric for Jinnah to follow, so he kept roughly to the subject. “So are you saying you didn’t know Thad? That he wasn’t a squeegee kid?”

“He’d blown the scene, man,” said Red Bandanna. “He wasn’t one of us.”

“Ah, but he used to be. And was he a dealer or a user?”

“We don’t deal, asshole of the corporate media!”

“Look, I don’t give a shit if he was either,” said Jinnah sharply. “He was a human being and he didn’t deserve to end up under a tree with his head cut off.”

This took Red Bandanna aback for a second. Girlfriend stepped up to the plate. “He wasn’t around much. So don’t try and label him.”

“I just want to know a little bit about him, as a person,” persisted Jinnah. “Was he part of a gang or something?”

“We don’t have gangs, apologist for the state!” Red Bandanna had recovered. “We’re like a family down here.”

Jinnah found this rich. Well, as long as they pretended to be a nuclear family, he might as well drop the bomb on them. He flipped open his notebook to the sketch of the marks on Thad’s cheeks. “So what’s this then? The family coat of arms?”

Red Bandanna and Girlfriend could not hide the look of surprise and fear that flickered briefly across their faces and was mirrored in the rest of the gang. They recovered their collective cool quickly, however. “What’s that? Your night school art project?”

“It was found on Thad’s cheeks. Know whose sign it is?”

“Look, fuck off, media puppet,” shouted Girlfriend. “You’re scaring away business.”

“Yeah. Beat it,” added Red Bandanna, flicking Jinnah’s cigarette back at him.

Jinnah beat it. He didn’t know what he had, but he knew it was hot. Had to be to scare this group. Lines on paper that scared people. That was Jinnah’s job, often as not. It was time to put the fear of God into city desk.

* * *

“He was marked for death. In an exclusive Tribune report, we reveal how a deadly new gang has staked its turf on Vancouver’s mean streets by decapitating a young man from a good family.”

Jinnah’s editor antennae twitched, twisting ever so slightly to catch the subtle signals issuing from Dick Whiteman’s mouth; anything in his tone or facial expression that suggested approval or disapproval. It had been so much easier under Whiteman’s predecessor, Conway Blacklock, who could not hide the contempt in his voice as he read every story. But at least Connie had given the game away by the degree of derision with which he proofed the promo cards to be dropped into Tribune news boxes in advance of an exclusive. Whiteman wasn’t like that. He was the king of deadpan, a man who made Buster Keaton look like Jim Carrey. If he hadn’t been an editor-in-chief he could have made his fortune as a poker player. At the moment, Jinnah had no idea if the promo he’d filed suited Whiteman or not.

“It’s all ours, chief. Exclusive,” Jinnah ventured.

Whiteman turned his pale, blue grey eyes on Jinnah and stared right through his imitation silk shirt, past his gold, zodiac medallion (Aries), and even his African rug into a region uncomfortably close to his heart, where Hakeem did some of his finest writing.

“A chilling tale of callous murder almost unparalleled in Vancouver history.”

Whiteman’s delivery was as deadpan as his face. Since he’d only lived in Vancouver for three months his grasp of local history was somewhat shaky. Jinnah’s own history with Whiteman was too hit-and-miss to form a definitive analysis of the situation.

“You know for certain, of course, that this young man was either a dealer or an addict?” said Whiteman, voice still neutral.

This was a question Jinnah had been anticipating. He had his arguments — and a liberal dose of BS — ready. “The squeegee kids on The Corner said he’d been part of the scene,” said Jinnah, antennae shivering. “Plus Aikens said the initial prognosis showed Thad was dosed to the tits — the limit on horse.”

Whiteman said nothing. He arched his greying, ginger-flecked eyebrows and looked over to Frosty. “And do we have anyone — anyone at all — talking on the record, Ms. Frost?”

Frosty shook her head. “No, but given Jinnah’s instincts —”

“We all know about Jinnah’s legendary instincts. They have, I understand, cost this newspaper a fair amount of money in the past.”

Jinnah opened his mouth to protest, but one look at Frosty’s ravaged face silenced him. He ground his teeth, worrying the gold fillings (purchased at the expense of the union dental plan despite his suspicion that the mercury amalgam was slowly poisoning him).

Frosty stepped into the breach. “The kid was decapitated,” she said reasonably. “He had an established history on The Corner —”

“And we have the inside track here,” Jinnah cut in quickly, regaining the conversational initiative. “The cops are eager to co-operate with us.”

Whiteman let this last comment fall into a well of silence, where it rattled around in a hollow of unspoken suspicion. Name of God, thought Jinnah. What’s more important to this bastard? Selling newspapers or keeping the legal bill down to a minimum? The answer came a nanosecond later, emptying like a volcanic eruption from the contour map of Whiteman’s lined face.

“Proof, Jinnah. We need proof. Not co-operation, not instincts. I can’t let this run unless you get more to back it up.”

“What do you mean, proof?” Jinnah howled. “You’ve got the cops, you’ve got the kids —”

“I need a name,” said Whiteman calmly. “That would be a start. I would also like to know how you can say this man came from a good family.”

“Because Graham told me so.”

“And have you interviewed this good family?”

Jinnah had been hoping Whiteman wouldn’t raise that particular point. “Still trying to track them down,” he lied.

Whiteman closed his eyes, a sign of editor impatience. “Art?” he said softly. “Do we have any art, other than those long-distance snapshots of a body bag being loaded into an ambulance, which, by the way, seems a bit ludicrous, even given the state of our health care system?”

“I’m in charge of the words, Whiteman, not the visuals,” said Jinnah irritably.

Jinnah could tell by the look on Frosty’s face that he had gone too far. Certainly Whiteman’s visage betrayed nothing new. Well, in for a dinar, he thought.

“Listen, Chief,” Jinnah changed his tone to that of the pleading, whining toady. “My instincts tell me that these markings are the signature not just of the murderer, but a sinister new gang. I’m telling you, this will put us ahead of everyone else. They’ll be eating our dust.”

“Fine,” said Whiteman. “Prove it.”

Sonofabitch! It was the legal budget the bastard was worried about after all! Well, Dick Whiteman was about to find out what happened to infidels who crossed Hakeem Jinnah. He grabbed his coat and notebook and started out of the newsroom without a word.

Whiteman called after him. “Jinnah! Where do you think you’re going?”

Jinnah paused by the door. He made good and sure everyone in the newsroom was listening as he shouted his reply. “Deepest, darkest gangland, chief.”

* * *

An hour later Jinnah was still chuckling as he paced up and down the lush lawns in front of the Museum of Anthropology on the grounds of the University of British Columbia. The green campus at the tip of Point Grey, surrounded by sea and mountains, hardly looked like the set of The Sopranos, but nevertheless it was there that the very brave and the insatiably curious probed the dark secrets of the new millennium’s tribal societies. Jinnah smoked and waited for his gangland connection to appear. He considered the exquisitely carved totem poles standing guard over the museum entrance. The bright, simple colours painted on the wood were reflecting the glorious sun that had burst through the afternoon cloud. Typical west side. Hogging all the sunshine along with all the money. It was hard to believe that such beauty, such tranquility, could exist just a few miles away from the filth and squalor that was Main and Terminal.

The museum was practically deserted and few people were wandering around the grounds. Probably at Wreck Beach, Jinnah thought, and grinned in a slightly lascivious manner. The clothing optional beach was just around the corner from the museum and had once been a favourite site for Lionel Simons to stage mass, nude baptisms for his cult, Millennial Magi. Ah, those had been the days to be a crime reporter. The interviews he had conducted there. But he was looking for something quite different today. He spotted a woman in her early fifties walking towards him, dressed in a cardigan and a long, plaid skirt, and wearing stout, black walking boots. Jinnah quickly ground out his cigarette with his foot and smoothed down his hair. Showtime.

“Ah, Professor Bruce! How are the tribes doing these days?”

Dr. Alexandra Bruce was a plump, pleasant-looking woman with dark hair, dark glasses, and a bright wit. She looked more like a den mother than an expert on the social organization and mating habits of North American gangs. But the looks belied a tough interior and Jinnah always felt slightly guilty in her presence, like a student who had failed to do his homework.

“Jinnah. You said you had something special for me,” said Bruce, panting slightly — Jinnah could not tell whether from excitement or overexertion.

“Yes, professor. This.” Jinnah opened his notebook and showed Bruce the sketch of the marks on Thad Golway’s face. Bruce frowned and pursed her lips, holding the sketch quite close to her thick glasses for a long moment. Everything was riding on her pronouncement. Jinnah’s insides felt like they were being used to create a particularly elaborate origami sculpture. Sweat covered his face and his breathing came in quick, shallow pants, almost as if he was having a heart attack. It was a sure sign his inherent instincts were right. Or it could be, said his habitual hypochondria, the first symptoms of necrotizing fasciitis.

Finally, Bruce handed Jinnah his notepad back. “Definitely and without a doubt the Yakshas,” she said, beaming, as if Jinnah had given her a drawing of a particularly rare bird. “And you say this was found on the face of that poor young man they discovered this morning? Well, that is a first!”

Jinnah’s symptoms miraculously disappeared as a fierce glow of triumph spread throughout his system. Goddamn it, I knew I was right!

“Yakshas? Gesundheit. What the hell are Yakshas?” he asked.

Bruce looked at Jinnah, amused. “Jinnah, you surprise me. They’re part of the Hindu pantheon. Forest demons who, disguised as beautiful young women, lure travellers into the woods and to their deaths.”

Jinnah sighed. Bruce was an expert at North American gangs and could tell the difference between groups that appeared indistinguishable to most people, but she had a blind spot where Jinnah’s heritage was concerned. He put it down to watching too many Peter Sellers movies at an impressionable age.

“Listen, professor, you can’t tell me that a bevy of beautiful forest demons have set-up shop at the corner of Main and Terminal.”

Bruce laughed. She took an almost perverse joy in her work. “In this particular incarnation, Jinnah, the Yakshas are a U.S. based drug cartel that started off in southern California. Decapitation of victims is a Yaksha hallmark. So is scarring the victim with their logo. The twin trees.”

“Holy shit. You’re kidding me,” said Jinnah, furiously scribbling notes.

“I’m not in the habit of kidding you, Jinnah. They are now so large and well financed that they claim to be a legitimate business organization.”

“What? Like the Hells Angels?”

“Yes,” nodded Bruce vigorously. “This is the first time I have ever seen this signature north of the border. So be careful what you say. They’re quite sensitive about their image.”

Sonofabitch. Sensitive, New Age killers who could cut the head of a young man, mutilate him, then scream for their lawyers. Well, they would soon learn that there were things worse than trial by judge and jury.

Jinnah closed his notebook. “To hell with these assholes’ image, Professor,” he said. “These bastards are about to undergo trial by Jinnah.”

* * *

“How on earth did you get Bruce to talk on the record?”

Jinnah sat in his chair by city desk like a king surveying a field where he had routed his enemies foot, horse, and dragoons. The layout for the front page was on Frosty’s Mac. “Beheaded by Demon Gang!” was the main headline. There, at the top of his Tribune exclusive story was Jinnah’s byline. Not in the size of type that he felt was appropriate, but still, there all the same. It was what Jinnah lived for. The artwork was an illustration of the tree design lifted from Jinnah’s notebook. Hakeem had tried to charge the company for a freelance artwork fee, but Whiteman had rejected his claim out of hand.

“She always talks on the record when she has a first,” laughed Jinnah, answering Frosty’s question. “Then Alexandra Bruce loves seeing her name in print.”

Frosty, an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth, ran her cursor up and down the story. For all his outward braggadocio, Jinnah was nervous. This was the crucial moment when an attack of cold feet could sink the whole thing.

“I dunno. Any sick puppy could have carved that design into the kid’s cheeks. You sure you want to tangle with a drug cartel that makes the Hells Angels look like choir boys?”

“Like they’re going to sue us, Frosty!” Jinnah snorted.

“Their idea of a lawsuit is to fit you with a cement sleeping bag.”

Jinnah’s congenital cowardice twitched slightly at that. True, gangs sometimes took vengeance on reporters who made their lives difficult. Like Michel Auger from the Le Journal de Montréal. But the chances of the Yakshas doing so were very slender.

“Look, they put a giant neon sign on the kid’s face saying, ‘Here we are! Don’t fuck with us!’ For God’s sake, they want their name mentioned.”

“In which case, aren’t we doing them a favour?”

“I hope not,” said Jinnah. “But if it makes you feel better, send them a bill for a full page ad.”

Frosty’s finger hovered over the send key. Jinnah willed her to punch the button. After a long hesitation, she did so. “Okay, Reilly! You got the front page.”

Reilly, the night news editor, adjusted his glasses on his long, Gaelic nose and brought the story up on his terminal. Jinnah’s unrestrained smile broke out, cleaving his face in two. God, he was tired. Wearily, he rose to his feet, slinging his black leather jacket over his shoulder.

“Going straight home or do you have time to stop for a quick drink?” asked Frosty.

“Sorry,” said Jinnah. “I have a few errands to run first.”

At the top of the Jinnah shopping list was the Battery Stop. He had only replaced the alarm system batteries last month, but it paid to be extra cautious in his line of work.