There was a touch of panic in Parker’s expression. “It’s not just a dead pigeon, is it, sir?”
“It’s murder,” said Shad. “Murder most foul,” he added with a straight face.
“Shall we get on with the briefing?” I suggested.
“Yes, inspector.” Parker looked up at me with sad yellowish eyes. “What ever shall I do about the media?”
“Later we’ll need to prepare something. Right now we need to know how you wish us to proceed.”
Parker stared at me for two seconds, then frowned, reared back until he was at his full height, puffed out his chest, and bellowed, “Very well!” He thumped his chest with both fists several times, and bellowed, “Very well, then! We’ll grasp the nettle, shall we? On to Room 914!” On his knuckles and feet he scooted toward the access door, nearly ripped it off its hinges, and all thirty-five stone of him disappeared down into the stairwell, his parting cry of “Jam tomorrow!” echoing from below.
Something of stunned silence descended upon the roof. I glanced at my partner. “What happened to his accent?” asked Shad.
I shook my head. “For some reason he’s returned to Received Pronunciation. I believe he only adopted Estuary to fit in, which he never did.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
“Oxford graduate, you know.”
“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
I hoisted an eyebrow in Shad’s direction. “Murder most foul?”
The mallard nodded. “Murder Most Foul, directed by George Pollock, starring Margaret Rutherford, 1964.” Looking sideways at me, he said, “Foul, fowl, dead pigeon—get it? Huh? Huh?”
“Yes, yes. I quite get it,” I acknowledged painfully. “Thank you.”
“Any time. Give any thought to how we’re going to work this case with Parker running it? I mean, he gave you the perfect out. Why didn’t you take it?”
“As I recall, Shad, you nodded at me.”
“That’s because I’m a big marshmallow. You’re a tough old ex-London Metro murder cop and our leader. We depend upon you to keep us out of silly predicaments.”
I frowned deeply. “Shad, surely you see if Parker quits this case because he’s frightened of the media—”
“—among other things,” interrupted Shad.
“For any reason. Parker’s not stupid. He’s just—”
“Six cashews crazier than a Nutter Bar.”
“Shad, if he doesn’t lead this case and win doing it, he’ll be useless in the future both to ABCD and himself. We cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
“I suppose not.” Shad examined my face for a moment cocking his head to one side. “There’s something else, though, isn’t there?”
My gaze rested momentarily on the distant ground vehicle lights circling the St. Sidwell Roundabout west of the tower. “This insane degree of media attention over what appears to be a less-than-interesting case. Add to that the timing.”
Shad nodded. “You and I suddenly get the evening off, Towson’s out sick, Parker’s holding the fort all by his lonesome.”
I nodded. “The one detective who because of his copy phobia and size couldn’t possibly fit into the scene of the crime, the one detective who with each public bowel movement brings into question the seriousness of amdroids being in law enforcement at all, he’s the one who catches the case.”
“I checked the tower call log, Jaggs. Your newshound buddy Fido got the call to come to Parliament Street a good fifteen minutes before the Exeter cops notified ABCD.”
“Record on the call?”
“Throwaway mobile. Do you think that’s what the killer wants: ABCD to fall on its pratt and to look ridiculous in doing so?”
“Or someone using the occasion created by the killer. One question that remains to be answered is at whom this exercise has been aimed: Parker or ABCD.”
Shad cackled out a wak-wak-wak laugh. “If it’s Parker, that makes Nigel Towson our prime suspect.”
Despite an involuntary smile, I shook my head. “DS Towson may be dogging it, but he’s the grandfather of by-the-book cops. Former Royal Canadian Mounted Police, you know.”
“Yeah.” Shad shuddered. “I heard about that grizzly attack in the Yukon. Lucky his head was found by that RCMP tracking unit and they could copy his engrams into one of their bloodhound bios.”
“Yes. And as soon as he finished copying, he continued tracking down the killer he’d been after. Got his man, too. A lesser cop would’ve gone after the bear.”
“The media should hear some of these stories—how the cops in ABCD got here—rather than focusing on Parker’s poop and all this silliness.”
“Wouldn’t that be a treat? The media have programmed this city to expect ABCD to fall on its face and have a big laugh every time we do. Our success with the Hound Tor case, though, and getting blown up out on the moor stepped on their laugh lines rather severely. They seem grimly determined to get back to the giggles. That is why we must succeed in this inquiry, Shad. We must succeed, look magnificently competent in doing so, and with Parker in charge.”
The duck leveled a gaze at me. “And we are going to bring this to pass how?”
I looked down my Basil Rathbone nose at him and arched an eyebrow. “I have brushed in the broad outlines of the concept, dear boy. Fill in the details.” I pointed at the open door to downstairs. “Shall we brief our lead on his murder case?”
“Oh, let’s do.” Shad waddled toward the door muttering gloomily about computer-generated lizards, penthouses, Waterford Crystal birdbaths, action figures, and outrageous fortune.
Room 914 looked like every other interrogation room in every police station in every country in the world: featureless pale beige walls, white light panel above a plain white plastic table flanked by two sets of composite wood stools on opposite sides, audio-visual recording controls in a black enameled wall panel next to the desk. The only way 914 differed from other interrogation rooms was that it was en suite, or as Shad would have it, the room had an attached crapper. I sat on a stool at the table, Shad squatted upon the table, and Parker sat in the loo with the room’s door open—undignified, perhaps, but with olfactory compensations.
Through the open door Shad briefed Parker on the scene of the crime, the position and condition of Darcy Flanagan’s bio, and the impact and trace evidence. “Flanagan was killed elsewhere and dumped at the scene,” said Parker.
“Shad and I concur.”
“Security cameras in the area?”
I looked at Shad. He shook his head. “Nothing yet,” he said to the toilet door. “I’ve downloaded the area traffic surveillance records for this evening into the Heavitree mainframe as well as the private security recordings. The tech mechs are just getting started on them.”
The toilet flushed, but Parker failed to emerge. Nothing but silence for a long uncomfortable stretch.
“Parker?” I called at last.
“Sorry, sir. I was just thinking. What if Flanagan’s body was carefully inserted into Parliament Street for a purpose?”
“What purpose?”
“A political statement.”
Shad and I exchanged glances. “Dead bird in an alley—vote for Arthur Q. Schnebble?” cracked Shad.
“Hear me out, sergeant,” said Parker. “The deceased is a bio, isn’t he? We’re right in the middle of AB Emancipation Week, right? E-Week marks the Parliamentary Reform Act of 2132, which maintains suffrage for the human engram imprint, even onto mechanical or non-human bios, and it extends suffrage to artificially created intelligences otherwise qualifying as independent intelligent beings. See?”
Shad and I exchanged additional confused glances.
“It’s symbolic, sir,” continued Parker. “See, if Flanagan was purposefully dumped on Parliament Street, it may well hearken back to the original reform act that led to that little passage being named after Parliament. A possibility?”
Mallards don’t have eyebrows, but I swear Shad’s went up. “Parker, I bet you could tell me what the original act of Parliament was that lead to the naming of Parliament Street.”
“Yes, sergeant. It was the Reform Act of 1832. The act changed a number of laws in Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales regarding representation in Parliament, but the main thing it did was to increase the number of males who could vote by approximately thirty percent.”
“Fair to say it extended suffrage to the less worthy?” Shad inquired.
“That was certainly how the Exeter city fathers regarded it at the time. As we are all aware, that’s how the archbishop and the rest of the anti-AB crowd today currently regard the Act of 2132.”
I pondered that in silence for a moment. I glanced at Shad. He was looking at the tabletop. Once he had concluded shaking out his feathers from his head to his tail, he looked at me and said, “Well, gang, this nothing case fairly reeks with significant coincidence.”
“If DC Parker is correct in his facts,” I cautioned.
“He is. Checked it all out on Ferdie’s Freepaedia,” Shad explained. “Parker—” he began but stopped short. “Autopsy report coming in,” he said, his eyes focused at an invisible point between the toilet door and myself. “Flanagan’s human meat suit likely died as a result of a heart attack induced by the violent death of his pigeon bio. Death in the pigeon bio was caused by a broken rib through the heart as the result of blunt force trauma, the weapon being circular, approximately seven centimeters in diameter, convex in shape, fabric enclosed, flexible—”
“Shad,” I interrupted, “doesn’t that sound like one of those old beanbag loads for a what-do-you-call-it?”
A brief pause as Shad consulted Ferdie’s, then he said, “Gas gun. They were miscreant-safe weapons for use in riot control. The thirty-seven millimeter gas gun fired a 7.5 centimeter fabric-covered flexible baton filled with a 150 grams of lead shot.”
“Sounds like one of those could do a dandy job of mangling a pigeon,” said Parker.
Shad faced the toilet. “They’re antiques, Parker. We’ve got greasefoot, flashnet, and stunspray now. Gas guns haven’t been used anywhere for anything in over a century.”
Before I could suggest Parker put in a search for gas guns in Devon, he mentioned it himself. “Research will keep me out of public view,” he offered contritely as a wistful note came into his voice. “That’s what I used to do, you know. Research.”
Shad looked at me and held out his wings questioningly as the voice from the loo fell silent.
“Parker was once a police historian,” I explained. “Oxford, wasn’t it, Parker?”
“Yes,” he replied gloomily. “‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!’”
I glanced at Shad.
“Wordsworth,” Shad muttered back at me. Facing the door to the toilet he began to ask a question—probably concerning just how a police historian in Oxford wound up as a gorilla bio—when another call came in on Shad’s interface. “Tox screen on Flanagan.” He stood and faced me, nonexistent eyebrows arched. “Alcohol. In Flanagan’s blood. Enough to pickle a pigeon.”
We all thought on that for a moment. It was a case wrinkle with which none of us knew what to do just then. Shad’s tail resumed twitching, signifying another incoming call.
“The person who reported finding the body, Parker,” I said, “did he or she ever show?”
“Yes. Sharissa Thule. She’s a thirty-one year old woman—human natural—from Dawlish. She was in the city shopping and visiting relatives and was on her way from the Guildhall Shopping Centre to have tea at the Milkmaid on Catherine. She found the body on Parliament and reported it to a constable.”
“Why would a nat report a dead bird to the police unless she knew it was a bio?” I asked.
“She could tell it was a bio. I gather Ms. Thule carries a marker detector.”
“Really. Why?”
“The way she put it, sir, ‘I want to know whether to pet a cute little doggie on the head or send the bloody pervert packing.’ A bit anti-amdroid. Said something about a wolfhound in Lympstone two summers ago. The creature rubbed against her leg rather passionately. Turned out to be an amdroid.”
Shad’s tail stopped twitching; he spread his wings and faced me, his bill hanging open. He froze that way for almost a minute, and then said, “They want me back!”
“Sorry?”
“They want me back!” He lowered his wings and began pacing rapidly in a circle. “That was my New York agent. Barton Stanky? The duck stockholders somehow regained control of the insurance conglomerate over the lizard people—I don’t know the details, but Barton baby says the corporation stock has been diving for the bottom ever since their advertising firm dumped the duck! The clients have been demanding the return of the duck! Aa-flak!” he cried “Aa-flak! They want me back!”