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The

Final

Dream

Part One

Bart Alder

The broad mass of a nation... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one...

It is a fortunate thing for leaders that most men are stupid.

Adolf Hitler

It is an unfortunate thing for people that most leaders too

are thicker than bricks.

John Fisher

The Old Fart

The Old Fart, Pergerus of Arambel was the most wonderful liar I ever met.

He truly loved embroidering words, stitching them together and shifting them through the air.

His tales were always a new, exotic mix of the only two ingredients he ever knew, the odd cunning lie mixed in with the occasional careful truth. By entwining the truths with the lies he would expertly weave a massive, elaborate and compelling tapestry of bullshit.

He called such a thing a Fiction. It was an ancient word. To any Old Fart Fiction is a hallowed word. To Pergerus of Arambel, Fictions were the thread of his life. Fictions paid for his robust dinners - hundreds would attend to gorge on his food and hear his every word - they paid for his many mistresses, they paid for him to travel as he pleased. Everywhere he went, people would pay large sums of money to sit still for hours and hear his venerable Fictions.

Even in his old age, when prone to mumbling and sometimes falling asleep mid sentence, crowds would come to watch and hear Pergerus speak. His mellifluous voice unfurling lies of such poise and wonder that each lie shone as if it were a truth that should have happened, but sadly, did not. As though history had let us all down, and those greater truths remained undone, they would wait and remain undone until Pergerus of Arambel discovered them, wove them into his tapestry. His was an impossible reputation to live up to.

I looked at the crowd around me. Twenty people, all adults. It was a small crowd of course but a good one under the circumstances. They had come to this heated theatre, through the rain and cold winds to hear my lies, my fictions.

?I want Hamlet.? Said a voice near the front. They always want Hamlet. Pergerus of Arambel canonised the story of Hamlet. Ever since his first legendary solo performance of the ancient play, crowds have always requested it. But Hamlet is told by every Old Fart at least once in every town. I?d told Hamlet for three towns running and was wanting to tell something rare.

?I want something light.? said an old lady with a giant red hat, seated to the left of the stage. Hearing no response at all she stood up and repeated herself with greater volume only to have her remark greeted with boos. Nobody, but her it seemed had braved the freezing winter winds and the long dark night for a light hearted romance. They wanted peril, danger and a little insanity. Only an insane person would brave those winter winds.

Then, as is usual, once one person starts giving loud requests everybody wants to have their say. A giant man with a furry coat wished to hear a history of the Romans, another man, much smaller, wished to hear of the Greeks. Others prefered fantasy tales of dragons and witches. Suggestions came faster and faster. I held up my hand. I had decided what the story would be. I wanted to tell a Fiction about Fictions.

?I will tell you tonight of Eden.?

It was an ancient fiction of murder, war, duplicity, evil, ambition, innocence, madness. A tale traditionally woven with a sardonic tongue placed firmly against a bittersweet cheek, my own version also had the unusual virtue of being mostly truthful. Eden was a period of history I had spent years researching and for the first time I was interested in telling it to an audience with as much factual content as possible. But none of that mattered to them.

The story of Eden had quite recently been made into a holofilm. Why would I want to tell them of something they?d just seen only a few weeks before at the cinema?

Pursuading a hostile crowd to become interested in the story I have chosen is never too difficult. There?s only one thing which needs saying and their resistance crumbles.

?It is as told to me by Pergerus of Arambel.?

Without failure this gets their full attention, their immediate respect, it piques their interest. It was, of course, my first of many fictions for that evening but it had the desired effect. The room fell silent. The house lights were dimmed, the spotlight was on me.

?It begins,? I hissed portentiously, ?with a sound. A sound in darkness.?

Here I paused dramatically, lowered my voice, waited for the chills to move up my own spine, felt the hairs on my arms stand upright before I stared into the darkness, at the invisible, breathing crowd and said:

?A sound which kills.?

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The Sound Which Kills

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December 4, 2041 a.d.

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The United States of America

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A tyre exploding.

Jessica Carey felt herself lose control of the car. She saw the headlights of the oncoming vehicle, they were close, too close to avoid. The lights? brilliance forced her bloodshot eyes into a painful squint as her rigid, white fingers choked the useless steering wheel. A stubborn cigarette butt still smouldered in the car?s jammed ashtray as Jessica?s dark, crippled, sedan continued spinning on the icy road.

?Oh God!?

Her hands flew from the steering wheel and protected her face.

The two hulks crumpled, the front of one into the rear quarter of the other in a shriek of metal in pain. The wild spray of exploding glass and ripping steel drowned out the noise of the two drivers? wide eyed, heart pounding screams.

Both cars jolted, Jessica?s into the air, flying directly into a buckling power pole with a crunching roar so loud that she was deaf before her head demolished what remained of the windscreen. Crushed into a metal tomb, it crunched to the ground with a giant thud, finally exploding from underneath in a giant spray of fire, metal and glass.

This, while the second car, a green bubble-shaped hatchback, went slewing wildly, uncontrollably off the road down a slight grassy embankment, digging criss-crossing furrowed black trenches through the white snow-covered field with its whining, squealing tyres as it went.

Nicole Arliss was still screaming, frantically holding on to the steering wheel with more hope than skill as her car careened alongside an old, wire fence inexorably towards a massive rock.

She felt her body jolt again as her cage smashed into the half buried boulder. The metal bubble flipped over, sailing through the air, landing on its roof it slid towards a large field of trees. Uprooting some smaller saplings, the car slowed down, the rear of the shell finally resting gently against the narrow but unyielding trunk of a big old pine.

After a second more a huge blanket of snow from the tree?s branches fell upon the car?s upturned underside with a single, loud whump.

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Whole Universes

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The old, grey-haired man stopped his van with a foot slamming hard and fast on the brake. He was on the hill above, twisting his van around with a thick streak of rubber on the road and a squeal still ringing in his ears. He looked back on the accident, his astonished face saddening by degrees as the cars flew through the motions of becoming wreckage. He saw the sparks fly high into the air, the sedan hitting the power pole and then the brief darkness as the power lines were snapped.

Mesmerised, he watched in horror at the light returning brilliantly, as fire flew from the metal tomb and after what seemed like a forever of tumbling and flipping, he heard the eventual silence as the bubble hatchback came to rest. As the fire gradually spent itself, he felt the dark palpably returning. Goosebumps covered his whole body.

?Dear god.? he breathed his words, drew them out now that he was finally able to speak.

His left foot was on the clutch, the right on the brake, one hand on the gearstick pulling it thoughtlessly into neutral, the other hand still stuck to his forehead in disbelief. His engine running, his heart pounding, a million fighting thoughts flew at him at that moment vying for his attention. As he stared at the dimming flames he wondered what he should do, what was the right thing.

He tried to gather his thoughts, aware of the urgency, was a life even now being lost? Was there someone down there, somehow still alive? He might help them. Save them.

He poked his head out the window into the chilling wind, his frustration showing on his thin, pale face. His van was loaded up with cargo, a delivery that was already twice delayed due to recent blizzards and running so late tonight that he wouldn?t be back home in bed until at least four in the morning. He checked his watch. Almost midnight. It just wasn?t so simple.

But when you saved a life... you saved someone?s whole universe. One car had not exploded. There could be as many as four different universes down there. Gasping for help.

He looked back out of his side rear window at the glowing wreckage down the hill.

Eventually he reached his decision. Things really were so simple. Sometimes you can think too much.

?Screw it.? he said to himself as he put his car in gear. He hit the accelerator hard. The engine roared into the night, the tyres squealed as they slid and gripped and with a final sudden drop of the clutch, he was on his way.

After all, it was the right thing to do.

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Ditching Marilyn

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It was a hot early morning and once again Ewin Adams had his hands up.

This time it was because the eleven dirty, badly dressed and neuronally depleted men in front of him had a total of seventeen guns trained on his chest. He looked calm and collected, as though the only reason his hands were in the air was because he was ventilating his armpits.

?Fok you, Adams.? yelled Miguel Hernandez, the fat and sweaty Nicaraguan druglord whose breath, it was claimed, could embarrass his arsehole. ?They will shatter every bone in your body before they kill you.? He turned to his men. ?Do it.? he muttered.

Hernandez grabbed Marilyn, an attractive, young, olive-skinned woman with a method of walking more feline than human, by her elegant arm. He swung her out the door to where his private restored antique Cessna, lights blazing into the darkness, was preparing for take-off. The glowing prelude to sunrise spread out across the eastern horizon. Stars were still twinkling in the paling sky overhead and to the darker west.

This time Adams was about to die in a large brick-walled, tin roofed shed in smelly, humid, sticky Nicaragua, wooden packing crates crammed with bags of cocaine beside him. His gun was, as usual, on the floor and out of reach. He sighed, thinking that at least, this time, he was handsomely dressed for the occasion. He tapped his shoes on the ground a few times to relieve the boredom.

Adams appraised the swarthy, hairy individuals in front of him and let his hair dangle in front of his piercing blue eyes. He was damned if he was going to die in a place where even at sunrise the air was still hot from the day before. Especially not when a Tequilla hangover was threatening a takeover of his frontal lobes. And definitely not when a sensitive young woman was going to die at the hands of a druglord maniac. The abundantly smug men who pointed their Uzis at him had no idea that the wall behind them was about to try and kill them.

?Activate explosives.? he whispered. His CIA issue computer contact lenses had a user friendly read out which showed him that the neat array of charges on the other side of the wall were now primed and happy to explode on command.

?Prepare to die, Americano.? said a tall skinny guy with a little moustache.

They cocked their weapons. All of them were smiling and none of them had a full complement of teeth.

?You know Nicaraguan dental care has a lot to answer for.? was all Adams could think to say as he smiled his shiniest, but manliest grin. ?Or Nicaraguan food.?

?Hey shot the fok up.? blurted Enrique with a frown. Enrique was a man most notable for having a moustache which looked as though he?d drawn it on with a black wax pencil. Formed of slender bones, Enrique boasted skin which fit him like wet sheet covering a skeleton and a cocaine habit which had paid for his dealer?s four bedroom house in six months. Enrique was especially interested in seeing this deal go through since for Enrique, killing Ewin Adams would go a long way to securing the trust of the biggest dealer in Nicaragua, Miguel Hernandez.

They were all lined up. Took aim. It was time.

Adams blinked his eyes softly and in the darkness said the word ?Boom.? and the wall twenty five feet from him became a hole of fire, a mass of flying brick and mortar. Ten men with uzis had quickly become three bodies and seven mostly deaf men with broken bones, open wounds, bruises, cuts and pounding headaches.

A large chunk of brick flew past his head and crashed through his longish, but manly hair as Adams pulled the gun from the holster at his right ankle. He picked up his other gun from the floor. Checked his hair for damage. There were a few split ends, but it was nothing serious.

One man, the weight enhanced Jabba the Hutt impersonator who had been guzzling a pizza before the wall exploded had recovered quickly and was already shooting at him. Adams was however already crouched quite safely behind a crate.

The cochlea implant in his ear started ringing. Clarence Penrose only ever seemed to call one of two times, either when Adams was on the toilet or when he was getting shot at.

Someone else started shooting. The drug-whacked skinny dude with the tiny moustache.

?Hello?? said Adams softly. There was a click.

?It?s me.? said the voice in his inner ear. ?Jess didn?t make it.?

?I?m kind of busy again sir. Can I call you back??

Adams jumped up to have a quick look. Three men were now also partly conscious and were presumably going to start shooting soon. He shot the fat pizza guy and the coked up skinny dude and ducked down again. That was five down. Five more to go.

The voice in Adams? ear was tinged with rage, and if Adams heard right, fear.

?No! She didn?t turn up! I don?t have it!? Penrose had done a lot of shouting recently. His voice was beginning to sound hoarse.

Another man had by now come to and had started shooting. He was the weight-lifter with the gum disease. Every shootout with a population bigger than five has at least one weight-lifter it often seemed to Adams. One obligatory redneck loser who tore his shirt off at the first opportunity to remind everyone that his heavily oiled abdomen looked like it had a row of speedhumps growing between his chest and his dick.

Adams stood up, shot the weightlifter and crouched down again.

Suddenly two of the remaining men were spraying bullets all over the place.

?Finish what you?re doing there quickly and go to ground. Special reassignment.? yelled Penrose.

?Are you mad? I?m only half way through this thing.? Adams screamed over the hail of bullets. Soon the last two men had come to and were joining in on the shooting frenzy. Cocaine was flying everywhere. He was getting high just breathing it in. If he stayed in here too long, he?d overdose.

?I need you. It?s urgent. It?s about Crossfire. You have to go to ground though.?

?Oh, for god?s sake.? Adams growled. ?Enough!?

He sprung up and shot the four men quickly. For the first time in some seconds there was quiet. He permitted himself a breath.

There was coke all through his hair, on his clothes and in his thick, dark eyebrows. Somehow, through all of the white powder, Adams managed to look suave, sophisticated and still in control as he raced over to the bodies with the perfect mixture of haste and virile elegance.

He looked left sharply, and holstering his weapon and picking up an uzi or two, darted out the door.

The plane was already leaving.

?Oh, god. It?s a chase.? Adams was disappointed. He leapt into a jeep and hotwired it. As he took off after the plane, he cursed silently. Now he?d probably end up doing something totally foolhardy and improbable, such as bringing the plane down barehanded by unscrewing a single wing nut with his toes while hanging on to a fraying rope. Why was it never simple?

?I thought you said it was a shootout.? said the voice.

?It was a shootout, but it?s become a chase.? said Ewin Adams feeling the cocaine charge through his system, ?Hernandez is on that plane.?

?Oh. Yes I see it now. An antique Cessna.? said the voice in Adams? ear. ?Look this is kind of important... can?t this? plane thing? wait a couple of days...?

Adams was driving towards the plane which was already taxiing down the runway, heading away from him.

?No this is important. Hernandez is utterly mad. We?re talking about a plague here. A major plague.?

?Okay, okay. So he?s a loon. Just do it quickly.? said Penrose a little angrily.

Adams was soon close enough to the plane to see his best approach to boarding it. He stood one foot on the driver?s seat and the other foot on the door of the jeep, using his uzi wedged between the seat and the floored accelerator to keep the jeep going.

?So go on, tell me about Crossfire, what stage are we at??

?A very sorry one.? mumbled Penrose, his voice hollowed by underlying desperation.

?Meaning?? asked Adams losing a little patience.

He steadied the steering with his hand. He noticed a pothole on the tarmac up ahead. His Jeep?s front driver?s side wheel was heading straight for it. His hair looked great as he left an airborne trail of high quality cocaine. Glowing insects were eating it in the air, leaving a bobbing, star-like trail behind him as he drove calmly but efficiently towards the tail of the plane.

He climbed on to the bonnet of the car now that he was almost close enough to jump.

?Meaning it?s all gone haywire. And I don?t mean that like I normally mean it. It?s not the usual. She didn?t turn up.? Penrose was getting increasingly agitated. ?Crossfire will go ahead with you or without you... unless...?

Unless you come now was how Adams interpreted the unfinished sentence.

Ewin Adams slipped and fell as the jeep hit the pot hole, the recoil of which flung him up into the air and with a half pike and a twist, he was on the wing of the plane, standing. His Gripp-o-matic shoes had, as his CIA gadget technician promised, self activated. His jeep steered off to the right. He?d landed on the plane in the pilot?s blindspot and, thanks to his shoes shock absorbent soles, gently and soundlessly.

?Deactive grip.?

GRIP DEACTIVATED Flashed on and off twice. His right contact lens was malfunctioning again but he felt his shoes return control of both feet.

?I?m not going to kill no president, no matter how demented you say he is.? Adams was feeling pitifully baited into taking the job, but also unable to suppress his curiosity about it. ?So don?t ever ask me too.?

?We don?t want to kill him either. We need you and we need you now.?

Adams was no fool. Penrose didn?t want the president dead but only because he could get a lot more political mileage out of catching him alive. Adams didn?t respect that, but so long as it was in both their interests to keep president Wash alive... Adams lit a cigarette... it was wise to make friends out of strange allies.

?Will you please stop screwing around and finish up there?? Penrose was beyond fury.

He moved to his left, lined up the pilot?s head and shot. The pilot slumped forwards and the plane rolled out of control along what in Nicaraguan drug smuggling country passes for tarmac.

He deftly took a laser cutter out of his dinner jacket and cut an eye hole in the plane?s hull. He could see the drug dealer through the hole. He cut a second hole, a slightly bigger hole through the hull, low and to the right of the first and into this second hole he placed the barrel of his gun.

Marilyn was sitting strapped and unconscious in a wheelchair. There was a drip in her arm.

The drug lord was sitting a few seats away, running his hands through his hair in panic, first it was why had the plane stopped accelerating, then it was who had shot the pilot and next it was going to be ?Adams!? and then there would be a hostage situation as Hernandez grabbed Marilyn and waited with a knife or a gun at her throat.

?Adams!? said Hernandez enraged, slapping a fist on to an open palm.

Ewin Adams pulled the trigger and Miguel Hernandez the drug dealer went down in a bloody heap.

With the stealth of a cat, he opened the door on the side of the plane and swung it open as the airframe finally flopped to a halt. He landed steadily inside the cabin, wrapped an arm around Marilyn and whispered gently ?Where??

?Paragon Falls, Wisconsin. Not a reassignment, a special reassignment. I want everybody to think that you?ve gone to ground.?

?Loud and clear.? said Ewin Adams. ?I have Marilyn. You?ll clean up the rest here??

?I?ll get someone on to it.?

?Get Edmonds. He?s good. There?s a warehouse.? Adams added. ?It needs bombing.?

?I?ve got your old files. Leave it with me, just get your arse to Paragon Falls.?

The girl looked at him puzzled. She was sedated, her reactions were slow.

?Ewin, who are you talking to now?? she asked with a Hispanic purr.

?Over and out.? said the voice in his ear, hanging up.

?My boss. How are you feeling??

?I?m okay. Feeling a bit blurry around my edges.?

?Do you know what they gave you? No? How about we get you to a doctor??

There was more information coming in. He blinked and rubbed his right eye vigorously.

The contact lens on his right eye always gave him hell.

?Excuse me Marilyn. View file,? he muttered testily and the lenses projected an image of the remains of a car crash into his eyes. He looked at the interior side of the plane since it was almost uniformly white and he could see the images better as the lenses on his eyes, like miniature projectors, cast phantom shadows of Jessica Carey?s car crash on to Ewin Adams? retinas.

?Oh my god.? thought Adams frantically. Sweat dripped off his brow. Oh my Christ...

He saw a bloodstain in the snow, a seatbelt out if its clip, a woman?s body wrapped in blue dumped on a bus shelter, a pair of thick tyre tracks on the road. Then as more files came in, Adams understood what Penrose had been on about when he said it was not the usual. Jessica.

?Jessica Carey is dead. Oh my god.?

Bloody Penrose. I don?t have it. She didn?t come. Not the usual. That revolting coward. Someone had killed ?Marilyn, we have to go NOW.?

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A Well Gone Crazy

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The Listo-tronic intelevision in the corner of Hudson?s tiny room came alive with the smiling face of Kitty Calhoun, who was both a woman and in the news entertainment industry. It therefore goes without saying that she was also thinner than fibre optic cable, frequently blonde, definitely well busted and sexy without appearing available.

Kitty was also well loved by her network since even when an interview was terminally boring, she could be relied upon to keep smiling in front of fifty million people with remote controls, charming them into not changing the channel.

On the other half of the TV screen, sitting in the same studio but ten feet and facing away from Kitty because of his tendency to spit huge wads of phlegm as he spoke, was Con De Saind. Con was a middle aged political analyst with a long career in television. Con had a voice louder and more vulgar than his green and purple tie.

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At the sound of the intelevision exploding into life, Hudson White, awoke from his vividly disturbing dream with sweat on his ebony forehead. He shoved his angry face underneath a wafer thin, and none too aromatic pillow. There was a chill on his chest as the cold wind swept through his barred bedroom window and into his now slightly torn sleeping bag. The tear one inch long and all the way through the bag to let the freezing cold draft in, just right. Nice and freezing to death now, thankyou.

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The TV droned on. ?Are you saying that you think president Wash has... locked himself into this policy of co-operation with Japan? That he can?t back out, because it looks bad, like he?s weak that way too?? Kitty asked her great and direct question, which had been written by someone else, projecting a whimper of sympathy in her voice for the president as she verbally flayed him. Bethany, the president?s wife was in a coma and that meant that the press now had to be caring and sensitive to the president whenever they flayed him.

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?Off.? muttered Hudson, his voice muffled.

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?That?s exactly what I think and that?s exactly what any sane person will think,? said Con, who had thought since he was quite young that any sane person logically had to think like him. ?Once they read my arguments in my newly published bestseller The Yellow Peril which is available in all good bookstores and incidentally contains an introduction written by Elijah McGovern...?

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?Oh god,? groaned Hudson, peeling a corner of the pillow from his mouth. ?Off!? he commanded again as Con burbled happily away about what a great writer he was, what a fantastic book he?d written and how everybody he met agreed with him on this point.

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When Con finally inhaled, fearing another three minute long curriculum vitae, Kitty asked her next question right off the cueing machine. ?And do you think that there?s any way the president can survive impeachment before the next election??

Con thought about her question for a second or two before he answered.

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?Don?t make me come over there!? cautioned Hudson. As everybody knows the whole point of Listo-tronic intelevisions is that they have no buttons or remote controls at all. Liston Engineering guaranteed that your voice is our command. They had made billions by manufacturing voice activated appliances. Toasters, televisions, heaters, fans, lightglobes? Hudson was not threatening to turn the appliance off manually, he was threatening to beat it to death.

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?No way. No way in hell. I predict the president will be out of office before next weekend, I mean after all the bad decisions he?s been making about the future of America, in my mind, there?s no way he could stay on.?

?And the vice-president? Do you think he?ll retain control once the president resigns or is impeached??

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Hudson decided it was time for a new word. A new approach.

?Pleeease??

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Con shook his head and once again prepared to show the world his predilection for speaking in cliches and mixed metaphors all at once. ?No, I wouldn?t think so. The vice-president isn?t going to have the confidence of the American people either, I mean he?s towed the president?s line on Japan, so he?s got blood on his hands too. The average American is just already too angry with the president over Japan. He?s let us all down just one time too many, I mean we all know what I?m talking about. It won?t be long now before the pot boils over. Wash has got to go, the vice president has to go with him and there?ll be a massive hole in the Whitehouse in need of some quicksmart filling. I?d say if congress doesn?t impeach president Wash within the next week, we?ll have a civil war in America for the first time in three hundred years.?

?Goodness me, that is a long time.? said Kitty, amazed.

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?Oh Christ, will you pleeease just shut the fuck up?? Hudson begged from underneath his pillow.

The magic words Will you pleeease just shut the fuck up? activated the intelevision?s snooze chip and the Bed and Breakfast?s TV died.

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That was when Hudson knew that it was going to be a screwed up day. When the free of charge TV, bolted to the floor in his coffin-sized room, after two nights of doing nothing but lying dormant and silent, had in puff of fuzzy logic, become infused with the need to inform him that the country he lived in was about to crumble into even greater self decay.

?Thankyou.? said Hudson. ?Thankyou so very much!? he said enjoying the silence.

He felt so cold.

Hudson had desperately wanted to close the window last night and shut out the strong cold breeze, but the smell of the damp room had been too strong, it had kept him awake. He suspected that the reason the wafer pillow was so darkly soiled, was because everybody who had used the room, like him, had decided to clamp it to their face as a filter so that they didn?t have to smell the deep rot in the walls.

The dream.

It was the dream.

The same dream as the last few nights, but with new variations.

He could remember it clearly, or at least pieces of it clearly.

It had started with a knife at his throat. Or was it a gun at his ear? He wasn?t sure. Maybe it had been both.

Either way,

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He was in a room where the bed was made of stuffed dead animals and where the walls bulged under the weight of the roof. The ceiling was caving in and the walls were trembling. He had to get out. He ran towards the outside window and he jumped through it in a spray of glass as the roof collapsed behind him.

He expected to land on a rosebush but was lying on a thick carpet inside another large room. The walls were collapsing here too. He looked around, there was a door. It was locked. He rattled on it. There were suddenly no windows.

Bits of mortar fell at his feet.

He threw himself against the door.

He heard a laugh behind him. A laugh he feared the sound of, a raspy, evil laugh.

He looked around and he was outside in a prairie and before him stood a man whose head was in front of the setting sun, the dark shadow ate his face away so that he seemed to Hudson to be simply a man with no face at all.

The man pulled his dark face close to Hudson, and Hudson could still see nothing but darkness where the face should be. Soon, the man was so close that darkness was all Hudson could see.

And that?s when he knew that he was falling. Once again a dream of falling. Once again falling into a stone, water well.

As he twisted his body around he looked up the well towards the daylight, he noticed that shrouded in the piercingly vivid dark blue circle of light at the top of the well, was a sign, stuck firmly in the hilly grassland around the well, yet in that dream-like reality in which coherence is merely an inconvenience, the sign stuck in the grass was somehow easily readable from down in the dark, damp interior of the well. It was a sign which read, quite simply, ?Exit.?

That was so obviously symbolic of Hudson?s life since the academy, that even Freud, on one of his most sex-obsessed days, couldn?t have missed it.

Symbolic of his life, that is, since the academy kicked him out on his arse, booting him right out of the city limits, far out into the middle of sub zero winters, into half snow-covered Paragon Falls, in the North of Wisconsin. Population : two hundred and sixty-one.

Paragon Bores was what Hudson had called this place when he?d seen it from the coach at night. A series of barking guard dogs, stately looking double storey homes sitting a long way back from the road, huge rolling dark lawns, surrounded and protected with electrified, barb wire fencing and Screw The Dog, Beware Of The Owner signs. Everywhere he had looked there were more flickering lounge rooms, more sad and crooked looking dim streetlights, unevenly spaced and not very useful except to judge the general lay of the land by. Token streetlights, really. A homage to glowbugs.

He breathed in the rancid damp smell coming off the walls through his pillow.

Arriving here... that had been the night before last.

His dream flashed into his head again.

Falling down a well... how had it happened? How had he wound up... here?

Life was in control of Hudson and yet he never remembered loosening his grip on it for a second. All the same... here he was, falling.

In life?s casino the world has always had the numbers, Hudson once believed in his free-will. At this - and seemingly every other single moment of his life - the world had trumped Hudson?s free will with a second deck of numbers which he could never manage to find. The numbers often took him on painful detours in life, which formed him to be sometimes a little bitter at existence.

?What a world.? thought Hudson.

He pulled his head out from under his pillow, being sure to keep his eyes closed, his long black eyelashes locked together, his face looked like something so revolting you?d need a licence to own one. The bags under his eyes now had the eyes surrounded. He kept them closed, sensing time pressing him to open them.

?Just a bit longer.? he thought to himself. ?Not ready yet... not ready.? He shivered. Not ready to face the well.

?What a world.? he said again, the cold, morning air hacking at his lungs felt like acid in his chest. The sound of his voice was still soft, but oddly made close by the smallness of the room. He wanted the familiar feel of his attic room back in Milwaulkee.

Hudson felt vaguely uncomfortably cramped by the thought and he tried to let it go.

He returned to his dream. He remembered seeing his lips moving as he fell.

What was he saying as he was falling? Was he whispering something perhaps? Hudson tried to grip at the snippet from the dream but as he did so, it made a run for it.

He took a breath, a deep one.

The cold bit into him hard. The crashing in of the brutal reality of the biting cold took the memory of the dream by surprise, and the vision and memory came vividly to him in that moment.

He had not been whispering in prayer!

He was screaming. A scream shrill with incomprehension. A scream tearing through the ears as it went echoing off the bricks of the deep deep well...

?Fuuuuuuuuck!?

A frightening sound, the pitch dropping as though he were hearing it from above, from the top of the well. A sound like a bad guy falling off a cliff in a movie, the scream getting fainter and lower in pitch as he fell deeper and deeper, further and further away... towards... the certainty of death.

Standing at the top now, watching himself go down, yet somehow, being the one doing the falling at the same time. The sensation of air giving way to an object of greater density, the odd, tingly feeling of weightlessness, even sensations of scraping a knee against the stone circular walls of the well, but seeing it all from above, like a bird circling, a camera, an out of body eye.

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Hudson let out a sigh. Things weren?t bad for him, they were now officially fubar. As his mother had always said, ?Fubar fubar, the world is fubar.? She was right. The world was Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. You?d have to go back about a whole year to get to the point where things had been merely bad.

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Reign of Terror

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?If you decide on a life of crime, there?s still no better place to have a career than the United States of America.? said Kuff Linklefter, his portly, fifty year old, broken nosed image was cast on to the sleek, black, five foot wide Listo-tronic Intelevision screen.

The president of the United States of America, Andrew Wash, looked handsome even though he was exhausted. He clenched a smoking cigar between his teeth and took in the image of Kuff Linklefter as his right index finger and thumb picked absently at the dark leather upholstery of his Airforce One conference room chair.

Kuff?s statistics were impressive.

?Nine out of ten career criminals agree. It?s a land of boundless opportunity. There?s money and violence everywhere... a justice system that still doesn?t work. Expensive lawyers still get rich clients off and the innocents still live in fear... I blame the president. I think everybody does. His law reforms have not only failed badly, they?ve caused a whole new wave of legal loopholes and in turn new waves of crime. Not one of his promises has been kept. The man sold the American police forces to a foreign power for Christ?s sake, how much more of our tolerance can he reasonably expect? The people are speaking, the president has failed us and it?s time for him to go.?

?Assuming that president Wash does resign, what do you forsee for America then??

?Off.? grunted president Andrew Wash, a tall and handsome man in his mid fifties, grey hair cropped short, wrinkles which added charisma rather than age. He swiveled his chair to stare down the the three keen faced advisors from the CIA, the NSA and Military Intelligence.

?Okay... so what is it that couldn?t wait until after my nap??

?Sir, things are now beyond a joke and the Japanese have got to be dealt with, why not grasp the initiative and do it in Japan?? Peter Cardigan was a CIA advisor whom Wash knew to be a straight talking man and probably the most friendly in the room to his cause. Cardigan was a little simple at times, seeing the world in clear black and white, but honest enough. He could be relied upon to say what he really thought rather than what he thought you wanted to hear or what he hoped would boost his career. Everybody in Washington feared Cardigan since nobody knew what he might say next.

Andrew Wash looked angry. ?For a minute I thought it might be about national security.? Burke Seymour of the NSA looked as though he was about to try and pass earth?s moon through his small intestine, so the president continued with a smile. ?Oh come on. It?s all bullshit. Has everybody just forgotten why the reforms were needed? People are so puerile. The Japanese aren?t screwing us... they?re helping. It?s McGovern who?s doing the screwing.? The FBI director?s name was received with a small and quick exchange of glances.

Nobody present doubted that Wash had also had a mandate for the massive reforms.

Wash had worked for that mandate. He?d made profoundly poignant pre-election speeches. ?It is a cancer of justice when women fear rape the moment the sun goes down, when ninety year old men are murdered over a ten dollar bill or a pair of cheap sneakers, when the murderers, rapists and thugs go free while the victims cower in their homes, begging for freedom to be returned, aching for justice, screaming for rescue...?

Wash?s dreamy eyed charisma, his prowess with a microphone before a TV camera and his stern and certain words sold his reform ideas to a crime weary public. His approval rating had soared through the political roof following his repeated passionate pleas for public support. A new War on Crime bill was soon promised by the Whitehouse and two weeks before a congressional election, with superb political timing, Andrew Wash presented the highly anticipated reforms.

A crusading president truly tough on crime was what a violent and chaotic nation had long wanted and never seen. Once the people loved it, half of congress were forced to go along and pass the highly popular legislation; For that half of congress who faced election, the bill had come at a useful time. Voting for it two days before an election helped to get all but three congresspersons re-elected. Wash was, for a while at least, a popular man in congress, a popular president to the nation. Andrew Wash now longed for that public adulation to return.

?Sir, the new criminal code was great politics at the time. Nobody doubts it.? Nobody did. Many careers had benefitted from it. Certainly Peter Cardigan?s had. He?d watched on as in the space of only ten rousing and strong speeches Andrew Wash had created and initiated the greatest and most sweeping reforms to the legal system in American history. Cardigan?s career had gone along for the ride as the CIA?s advisor to the project. ?But the new code hasn?t worked because of the Japanese. They should never have been involved in the second wave of reforms. Easy to see in hindsight. In another time the code might have worked. But once the second wave started, and McGovern was the new FBI head, it just became untenable. Dump the Japanese, do it now.?

Wash was shaking his head.

?You don?t just dump these people. We owe them trillions of dollars in loans and because of that they consider our politics their business. You can?t get rid of that perception, I can?t shift it - even McGovern can?t get rid of it. It?ll take trillions of dollars to shift it. Anyway, the criminal code was my idea not theirs, this country needed the reforms, the Japanese agreed that our legal system was strangling the economy and they wanted to help. The code was supposed to solve our criminal justice problem and reduce our foreign debt. Not create this... hysterical McGovern bullshit.?

The new criminal code was a thick and hard to read affair. The first thing the code did was give police the right to beat people senseless with the inclusion of the phrase greater latitude with force in obtaining confession. The rampantly powerful FBI also had the right to beat people senseless although they had the right to do it across state boundaries and with more expensive batons. The CIA, Military Intelligence and the NSA had been beating people senseless since the invention of people, so the reforms didn?t affect them unduly. They were just glad that the senseless beatings they?d been dishing out for all those years were finally in vogue again.

The second thing the new bill did was make penalties more uniform across the country and far harsher by reducing state control over criminal legislation.

The last thing the code did was make further reforms to the justice system a lot easier to initiate by taking further power away from the individual states and by sticking a giant loophole inside the federal constitution. It was expected that future reforms would come soon, and they did.

Computer judges were now used to try smaller cases to speed things up and even harsher penalties were introduced. Terms were loosely defined in the new laws of justice, ultimately giving tremendous freedoms to government agencies to pursue, detain and prosecute suspected criminals. Finally, in the boldest step of all, the state police forces were merged under a federal umbrella only to be sold off three weeks later, sold station by station, state after state, to the highest bidder. They amounted to legal private armies.

Protection racketeering changed overnight into a government approved activity.

For this third section alone the code was challenged as unconstitutional by a brigade of civil rights lawyers, judges and political analysts and indeed it certainly was unconstitutional, but agitant lawyers and outspoken press were all arrested and beaten by the newly empowered crime prevention forces of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and the police until they understood that the constitution was only a piece of paper, while a truncheon was something which caused severe brain damage. Treason was a word that stuck in any career and a life of being beaten in prison was a pretty nasty future to have to face. Soon the claim of unconstitutionality was dropped.

?It hasn?t worked because of the Japanese.? said Cardigan again hoping that he could make the president see that it was the only opinion to hold that would salvage a career from ashes.

?It hasn?t worked because of McGovern.? replied Wash again. McGovern after all was responsible for more beatings than any other FBI director in history. McGovern liked power, he liked the freedom it gave him to create more of it. McGovern?s fledgeling empire was already so vast that he was easily the most powerful man in America, having the full support of the press, the politicians and the public. Not forgetting that a blossoming intelligence gathering agency and private army remained at his twenty four hour disposal.

?Yes okay that?s maybe partly true,? Cardigan was smiling indulgently, ?But he only stuck his head up because your code gave him the opportunity. You relaxed the police laws and then let the Japanese into the deal. McGovern was the wrong alligator at the right time. He saw your toes wriggling in the water and plain ate you alive.?

The president wafted a hand as though he swatted the remark away.

?Mr President, you cannot take this matter seriously enough. Unless you make peace with the FBI and dump the Japanese you are screwed.? added Seymour whom Wash had only met three times and had disliked since the first occasion.

Andrew Wash was also not easily intimidated.

?This is bullshit and all four of us know it. McGovern murders freedom and the people fear him. That?s not an ally of a president, that?s an enemy of the people, that?s a criminal. So maybe I?ll die today, but I?ll die with a clear conscience.?

?You gave him that power.? Cardigan was almost angry, which was rare for him. Wash was a little taken aback by Cardigan?s newfound irritability. He steadied himself and replied thoughtfully.

?No Pete, the power was always there, okay so I added to the power a little-

?A little?? Seymour chuckled.

?But he just took to the new environment like turd to a toilet bowl and America, you three especially, let it happen. McGovern?s the nation?s greatest mass murderer, but he?s totally beyond prosecution. Half of the people he arrests and convicts are guilty of nothing more than buying Sushi for lunch, but when McGovern?s done they?re traitors, a risk to national security and they have a bullet hole in their skulls. I can?t kick the Japanese in the nuts to please that murderous, lying son of a bitch. He?s out there raping justice and we?re sitting in here talking about the fuckin? Japanese being the problem with crime. You carry on like McGovern has a right to get away with his murders and and the lies he tells. All three of you are fuckin? cowards who won?t stand up to power when it gets abusive.?

The NSA man took the floor with a smile.?With respect sir, Elijah McGovern may well be a international liability but domestically he will not be stopped... the FBI has quadrupled in size in under twelve months! The public think McGovern is the only good thing about this country at the moment. You need to talk the Japs out of this deal for your own political life, surely by now even they see how hopeless this is. Are they willing to go to war with the world?s greatest military power over money??

?I will not go to war!? screamed Wash. ?And I certainly won?t go to war with an ally to serve the ambitions of an inbred baboon with delusions of grandeur.? He let Seymour try to work out whether he thought Seymour was the baboon or McGovern.

?Mr. president the country will soon go without you. War has been an inevitability since the riots started. If you?d declared martial law back then? it might have all been different...?

?If I?d declared martial law when the riots started I?d have started a civil war in the time it?d take you to shit a lemonade sandwich.?

?Colourful simile sir, and possibly true but you made yourself look weak when the riots started and you did nothing. The longer you left them the weaker you looked.? Cardigan was gentle again.

?I thought they?d go away... it was for the good of the country.? Wash looked at the floor and shook his head sadly.

?You?ve already lost the battle to McGovern. He will have his war. And Japan, in my opinion, have it coming.? Seymour was firm. He?d just sided with a maniac to stay afloat.

?You utter coward. You?ve been involved with this since the beginning. I mean you know I?m right, but you still have the balls to sit in front of me and say that.? barked Wash.

Seymour remained unmoved. The president had lost touch with all political reality some time ago. This was merely a courteous last attempt to get the president to shift and Seymour was bored already because it was clear that the president was completely entrenched.

The riots had started just after the press announced that Japanese multinationals had been buying police precincts by the dozen. McGovern made a series of progressively provocative speeches about how one country should manage all its own affairs. How one country should not need a second country to stick its tiny nose where it wasn?t welcome and that if this second country thought that because America owed it a lot of money, it could waltz in and slowly take over control of the multi-layered American governmental cake, piece by piece, then they had another thing coming.

McGovern had not really tried to control the ensuing riots, rather he had privately embraced them. Publicly he said how poor a reflection they were upon the nation and praised the president?s calls for them to end, yet as he went begging through Washington he gleefully used the riots for more money. ?I can?t stop a Japanese invasion and the riots without a hell of a lot more dollars.? he?d bickered on a radio broadcast one morning.

When public support went up for his cause so did congressional numbers and McGovern, as always, got his money. The president reluctantly put his signature on the dotted line since it both bought him a tougher stance on riots and showed his willingness to support legitimate investigation into Japanese corruption of American society.

Andrew Wash also knew a refusal to sign McGovern?s money bill would have meant the end of his political life immediately. There was no way Washington could tolerate a

The Japanese had been kind to him about this course of action. They?d said that they knew he?d also done more than anyone else to prevent a pointless conflict. He?d aided and abetted the rise of Elijah McGovern by signing for an increase in funds, but even then, he?d had no choice. By signing he?d really hoped to delay the war by a few months. Signing had kept him in office and so helped to keep McGovern at bay. To the Japanese Wash was preferable to a president who would sign over twice as much money to McGovern without a single twinge of conscience.

The president also knew for a fact that McGovern had started paying young FBI agents to incite riots in some of the more Northern cities where citizen apathy had been too great for the FBI director?s liking.

McGovern had also covertly founded the the American Patriot?s Army.

The APA were a major social force of activists and anarchists. The APA started life as a group of FBI agents posing as disenchanted antisocial vigilante thugs. They had outposts in most cities which avidly recruited legitimate antisocial thugs from wherever they could. The APA motto was that it was time for a vigilante group to protect America if America wouldn?t protect itself. They called on defecting police, some of whom were in the pay of Japanese businessmen, to join them, claiming it was not desertion to join one?s own country but desertion to leave it.

The APA were now a strong public militia with their own banners, a lot of weapons and a lot of sanctions from prosecution by the FBI. Any violent APA crimes against Japanese businesses or citizens went unsolved, any crimes against cops paid by Japanese businesses went unsolved. McGovern?s vengeance towards the Japanese was now openly brutal, the FBI considered any anti-Japanese agency, no matter how unlawful their behaviour, to be an ally.

Wash?s fingers had found a loose thread on his chair?s upholstery and he now concentrated a finger and thumb on plucking it. ?Japan can?t back out now without looking guilty before the world. Not just America, the whole world. They?ll lose bags of international credibility and look pathetically weak. It would cost their economy trillions. Their policy is fixed. Like cement. To them, he?s still just an FBI director.?

?Then they are stupid.? said Seymour.

?No,? barked Wash, ?it?s America who is stupid because he is just an FBI director. If you want to help America, don?t tell me how to screw the Japs over a barrel, do something about McGovern.?

?It?s really all of us who are stupid. We all let it happen.? Cardigan?s words verged on treason. Wash looked around himself to read the expressions of the men beside him. It was the closest thing this meeting would produce to a silent consensus.

Wash, feeling that a huge concession had just been made took a look at his cigar now perched in the ashtray. He watched the blue-gray smoke twirl towards the roof of the plane. ?You?re all still cowards. I?m going to meet with Moribundi, play a few games of golf and he?s going to lecture me on the position I?ve put him in. I?ll tell him that my country has gone mad and that there?s little I can do except ally myself with him and his cause. I can?t lie to him and I won?t betray him. He knows the truth, he knows what McGovern?s done, he was involved from the beginning.

?My best chance to avoid this war is still to keep Moribundi?s favour and respect. If I go to him with all your bluff and bullshit about pulling out of the reforms, he?ll go galloping to his foreign allies faster than you three cretins could count the herpes spots on each other?s nuts. I can?t afford to piss Moribundi off. Nobody can. Japan may not have a lot of military muscle but they?ve got a lot of powerful friends who do. Remember their economic leverage is far, far greater than ours.?

Colonel Gerald Bonobo of Military Intelligence was at last prepared to venture what in polite circles might be called an opinion. ?With respect sir, how can they afford to piss us off? We own just over half of the world?s nuclear arsenal. Even if we owe them all the money in Switzerland, that doesn?t mean they own the presidency... or the nation.? Bonobo was a military man more spherical than merely tall. Wash suspected that Bonobo was on a steady diet of five Prozac and thirteen burgers a day.

Wash shook his head.

?They don?t own the presidency, can you hear yourself? You fear Japanese advice influencing the smallest detail of the most pointless policy but you?ll have me throw the presidency to McGovern... The presidency is not theirs or his, it?s mine. It was granted to me through free election and until McGovern takes it from me it will stay mine. By all means have no respect for a president, but try to maintain a degree of respect for the presidency. And nuclear bombs? Pointless wars which satisfy lunatics, gentlemen, are not in the best interests of this nation.?

The Prozac and burger mountain in a military uniform spoke again. ?Diplomacy is not about selling off our police force to a foreign power. They have a word for that today Mr. president, and that word is treason.? Bonobo was resolute and snarling. Seymour was in agreement. Cardigan nodded sadly.

The president was unhappy, these three men had just told him that they would withdraw support from him if he were publicly accused of treason. Bonobo had threatened that he might be the first man to lay the accusation.

It was the last development which kept Wash amused.

?So Gerald, you have ambition after all. McGovern will be pleased he?s found such a powerful stooge. Why is everybody so prepared to believe that the Japanese are so pointlessly evil? So they bought a few police stations... big deal... so did the Germans, the Israeli?s...?

?The Mafia...? added Seymour.

?America becomes more productive, borrows less, Japan protects their investment, we get cheaper policing, less crime, more justice... everybody wins. There?s no Japanese conspiracy. They don?t want our government, government is all responsibility and burden, they want to see some of their debt money come back home. Why don?t people see how utterly pointless it is for the Japanese to want anything more. How it goes against their own interests??

Seymour spoke. ?With respect, that is utter garbage sir. How many more trillions will they stand to gain by being successful in a full take over of the American economy? A Japanese manufacturing empire with American engineering and half the world?s nuclear weapons looks rather threatening to some concerned world leaders, Mr. president. And gazing into your crystal ball I see it as a distinct possibility.? his voice was grave. ?The Japanese are manipulating you.?

Wash was finally too angry to argue. He sensed quite correctly that no further progress would be made.

?Get out... all three of you.? Their faces looked stunned by his sudden rage. Go on, I?m not joking now, the lot of you... just get out!?

When Wash was alone he picked up his cigar from the ashtray, ?Fucken idiots.? he drawled. He looked at his watch. It was time to catch up on some beauty sleep. Humiliation by golf was just hours away. He groaned silently.

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The Decline and Fubar of the American Empire

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There had been quite a few riots but so far they were more a phenomenon of the Southern states than the North. But nonetheless, even being in Wisconsin, which was about as North as it gets in the U.S., times were nonetheless tense.

North Wisconsin was mostly a mellow place by anyone?s standards, being comprised of rural milksheds, small farmlands, wide open spaces and people too busy getting rheumatism from the cold early mornings and freezing dark nights to give a purple puke about anything other than a steady intake of bran, fluffy toilet seat covers, thick woolly socks, roaring log fires and comfortable work boots.

And Hudson White, champion of a man?s right to maintain his political ignorance at all costs, had decided to not give a flying sideways shit about any of it. Every time any reality had interfered with the passing of exams or dreaming of naked women, it was reality which came off second best. The more he used this natural talent for obliviosness, the more proficient Hudson became at staying fully ignorant. But in the back of his mind, even Hudson knew that a great civil storm was coming slowly North and that it would reach Paragon Bores eventually.

His eyes finally opened although they weren?t happy about it. He threw himself quickly out of bed, shivering now, and shoved his shaking feet into a pair of socks and his body into a thick, woolly robe.

He scooted into the ensuite, which was more like a cupboard with suspicious looking plumbing. Closing the thin and draughty door behind him he ran the water for his shower.

The diamond shaped rose spasmed and rocked itself around a few times and then, slowly, the whole shower, walls and all, came alive. The water spent a good minute coming out like a slushie and then, as the heat came on, turned slowly scaulding hot.

Hudson waited patiently for the shower to finish its morning fugue of many moods. After five minor, hopeful, but ultimately useless adjustments of the hot and cold taps, Hudson still had the water temperature just the hot side of bearable but nonetheless he threw off his robe and leapt in, rubbing his body vigorously with soap, before he realised that his socks were still on.

?Yep.? thought Hudson. ?As I suspected. The morning from hell.?

His only pair of woolly socks, soaked.

?Oh well.? he said soulfully, ?They needed a wash anyway.?

Hudson looked hard and long at the tiny, little bright side. At least he wasn?t paying to live in this Edgar Allan Poe house of torture. Fisher had taken care of that sordid little detail. Money. Fisher had called it a good will gesture. Yeah. Right. Great fucking will. Here, have a goodwill stab in the face with a goodwill icepick.

Fisher.

Hudson felt ill as an image of the smug, little, golfball-nosed sonofabitch welled up in his mind. He stretched his back, he bent over and let the hot water work against his cold, tight, muscles.

Hudson turned off the water the instant he heard the toilet in the adjacent ensuite flush. He knew from previous experience that one single flush drained all the cold water from the shower, the result being that he?d learnt tremendous sympathy for coffee granules.

?Mutherfucker!? yelled Hudson to the wall behind which was the toilet in question. Thumping the wall hopelessly with his fist, dripping wet and already now freezing, the strong cold draught under the ensuite door tortured him, licking at his dark, goose-pimpled skin.

The Fucking Up Beyond All Recognition of the American empire was far worse than he imagined. Far worse than anybody imagined. The fubarity was also closer to Hudson in that moment than he could possibly have suspected.

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Penrose

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Clarence Penrose was the kind of man who closed the lid before he flushed and was sure to wash his hands straight after. Penrose could wash and scrub his hands and nails for up to two whole minutes sometimes before he felt he was free enough of bacteria to continue with life outside the bathroom.

He heard the young voice from the adjacent shower calling him a mutherfucker as he did up his fly and his belt. He scrubbed his hands slowly and gently at first but with more and more vigour until at last, when he saw drops of blood dripping from one of his cuticles into the cracked and stained basin, he was satisfied.

So what if he was a mutherfucker. Wasn?t everyone?

He turned off the water and dried his hands. He walked through to his tiny, revolting room. He closed the ensuite door, walked over to the single bed and opened his briefcase. It unfurled into a computer work station.

There was a voice behind him.

?I came as fast as I could. I see your taste in hotel rooms is as... exotic as ever.?

?Ewin.? Penrose turned around to see Adams seated in a chair lighting up one of Penrose?s Cuban cigars. ?It?s been nearly three hours. Where the hell have you been??

?I just want to know why you didn?t order a cover up.? baited Adams. ?Called it a biological contagion spill or something. We?d have kept this case airtight and we?d have had a chance to recover the disk. You were first on the scene after the poop hit the propellor. Yet you let it ride in a moment of panic. Very big mistake.? Adams drew on the cigar and blew the smoke across the room in a long, thoughtful plume.

?Yes. I could have done that. And by now the FBI would be involved, they?d know about the disk, they?d know about Crossfire. I?d be dead, the president would have all the evidence and you?d be screwed too. Then everyone would be screwed. Find me three people you can trust, Ewin. I can find two, one is the general and the other is you. No manpower right now I?m afraid, this is too delicate. It?s in your hands. Everything.?

Of course it was. Adams narrowed his eyes to make himself look more moody.

?Okay. So where is the disk??

?Well that?s what I want you to find out.? grisled Penrose testily.

?No I mean was it on her or in her car.? Was it burnt or did it survive?

Penrose shrugged. How the hell would he know. ?You know damned well we can?t just waltz on in there and start poking around the evidence. You find out. Discreetly.?

Adams sprang up from his chair. ?Fine. And do tell General Geddin I said I?m sorry to hear about Jessica.? he said as he slipped out the previously barred window, slid down the drain pipe and felt his feet on terra firma before Penrose could get to the window from across the room. Penrose searched the night for the sight or sound of a man running but all that was left of Adams was the hint of a scent of a Cuban cigar in the cold morning breeze.

?Bloody Adams.? said Penrose.

?I heard that.? called out a voice in the distance.

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A Reservoir of Guilt

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As well as seeing his breath, Hudson could now see great whorls of steam rising from his body right down to his dark, goose-pimpled flesh. Leaping out of the shower had created a sensation like stepping from a kettle to a windy deep freezer, while holding a cold soggy napkin for warmth. Hudson towelled himself as dry as he could in the shortest time possible.

His mind slipped back to his dream.

How did he know that the faceless man had a facial scar and moustache, a black moustache. Hudson tried to remember the shape of the moustache but the shape was gone.

He felt himself untensing, his shoulders relaxing. His mother Irene, had implored him to do this, every morning.

?Remember your dreams, think about them as much as you can. See what your subconscious is trying to tell you. It?s a lot smarter than you are in some ways and a lot dumber in others. Dreams are deep to the soul.? He remembered her beautiful dark face, wide brown eyes, a half cocked smile on her lips as she spoke to the roof, the walls, the furniture. He wanted to touch that smile with his hand. But never again.

Hudson had joylessly picked wax from his ears with his fingernail when she?d spoken about the soul. But his mother, as usual, hadn?t noticed his lack of attention to her spiritual monologues. She had been off on her constant tangent to reality. Her other planet, her fantasy island as Hudson had once dubbed it.

That was how she had always talked. About spirits, other worlds, souls and consciousness. But Hudson hadn?t listened, or understood a word until...

Until he realised that he had never listened. Until he realised that he?d been the one on fantasy island and that she?d been right. And by then it was too late. The importance of life, and the need for gratitude for just being alive had escaped Hudson the whole time he?d had a mother. He pulled the thought away from his mind and threw it out. He?d ignored that feeling for a long time. Hudson wondered why all that was coming up again now.

Irene?s death had changed Hudson in a lot of ways. When he was lonely his mother?s memory would haunt him. He knew it made sense, but he never got used to how guilty he always felt. Somewhere inside him there was a reservoir of guilt so deep that it would all but drown him at times like this.

He looked at his room and his heart sank. The Bed and Breakfast Inn was reputed to be Paragon Falls? Only place of temporary lodging which was surprising since a roach motel with blood on the carpets, peep holes in the walls, called The Norman Bates Inn could put the Bed and Breakfast out of business faster than a pint passes through a thirsty Yorkshireman.

?When the present looks shitty, look to the future and find a reason to smile. There?ll be one somewhere.? his mother had said more than once.

?Look forwards.? He imagined her smiling as he heard her lilted voice, croaky with years of beautiful, easy laughter. He still felt his heart twinge like a spear had been thrown through his chest when he thought of never being able to touch her smile again. Life was so cruel that way.

Look forwards.

He walked to the Diner. It was a five minute struggle with a steep hill and the bitter cold before he was in warmth. Paragon Diner was a vast improvement. He ordered some scrambled eggs and sausages and sat down for a good morning?s brood.

Dead Shot was the Hudson?s name at the academy. A name he intended to lose as fast as possible. His class voted him ?Most likely blow someone?s head off.? which caused him to get a little annoyed as he?d worked hard on everything but his shooting.

In his other subjects he was merely good, in his shooting he was an assured candidate. Of very high demand. And because of the political changes he could expect a higher first year salary than people who?d spent ten years on the force. The top few graduates were given scholarships as well which meant extra money and the priveledge of being allowed to choose their own precincts.

He?d been shooting cyberpeople when he knew which precinct was right for him. He was playing a Holographic Reality game the Japanese administrators had introduced. It was used in training Japanese police and had proven extremely successful in grading candidates in stressful situations. The Japanese owners had called the game ?Assassins? but which the academy quickly and spontaneously dubbed ?Miss the Hostage?.

The twenty-third precinct.

It was the sound of the name. Or something in the name, something in the name which he couldn?t place. Something... in the sound of the words. Something... familiar. Maybe the shape of the badge. Something just there, lingering. Loitering wherever the shadows of Hudson?s mind could give it space to lurk.

He knew there was no sane reason for wanting the twenty-third precinct. It was an instinct. Every time he tried to go against the feeling it had nagged and bitched at him like a bored grandmother with time on her hands and used to heeding such subconscious signals without too much resistance he settled in his mind that it was where he would go.

Yet here he was.

Hudson looked dismally out the diner window. He felt the warmth of a small electric heater pointing at his thin but cooler-looking socks and the food in his belly and for a moment, Hudson almost had the audacity to half-smile at the world.

The station still looked deserted. He couldn?t see his breath so much anymore, but it still steamed up the window. He deliberately blew a large cloud of white on to the glass and with his finger traced out a smiley face and watched it evaporate. He looked at his watch.

Nearly seven O?clock.

Final exams had come and gone and while exam papers were being graded, it was time for precinct preference forms to be lodged. He had lodged his form with the secretary at the Dean?s office. The secretary looked like a bottle of acid had exploded next to him in science class. He had taken Hudson?s selection form with a mirthless, corporate cold, Japanese, inscrutable smile. Hudson then strode off to the gym for his evening workout.

Returning to his dormitory only twenty minutes later he was therefore somewhat startled to see his precinct selection form lying on his immaculately made bed. On the top of his form was a hastily scribbled yellow stickered note explaining that it would be jolly good of Hudson to drop by the Dean?s office five minutes before assembly, the following morning. The note said no more and so Hudson presumed that the Dean of the academy wished to either query the choices on the form or else congratulate him on his distinction.

The Dean?s secretary smiled as Hudson found his way into the expensively furnished anteroom.

?I believe Dean Hakamaji is expecting me.? he said. Voice steady and calm.

?I believe that you are right.? said the enigmatic acid wash secretary, who was a neat and snappy dresser, with an air of knowing smugness which made Hudson want to shit down the man?s neck.

And in an instant the door to the Dean?s office was held open in invitation for him, and Hudson found himself strangely pulled by some invisible force into the dark room which was the Dean?s office. The door locked behind him with a clunk.

The room was so quiet that you could hear a priest fart.

The Dean rose from his chair and bowed curtly but efficiently to Hudson. Hudson who did not take well to bowing, being so tall, nodded his head being certain to hold it suitably low to show the proper respect. He found himself looking at his second button down from his collar and he felt like a fool. There was a glob of snot on it. He had no idea where it had come from, but he knew it wasn?t his, which only made things worse. He thought back to the smug look of the secretary and planned revenge.

After much formality and discussion of the weather, the Dean asked Hudson to be seated in a low and uncomfortable chair. The Dean then explained that there was a problem with Hudson?s selection of preferred precincts and that the only place which was ?viable? was Paragon Bores.

The Dean?s eyes never once left his desk, the pen in his right hand didn?t stop scribbling until the end of the explanation, when he finally glanced up for a second to see how Hudson had taken the news.

There followed a lengthy discussion in which Hudson?s voice grew steadily louder and more incredulous. Yet for all the volume there was surprisingly little progress. But then suddenly when Hudson hit ninety decibels, the Dean, whose sensitive ears were in agony, finally admitted that there was no choice. He conceded that in fact he owed a small favour to the Lieutenant who ran the precinct in question. The Lieutenant had put in a request for the academy?s most well-rounded cadet and he said, crisply and greatly offended by Hudson?s volume, that Lieutenant Fisher was due this minor request.

Hudson hadn?t taken to the thought that his life?s ambitions were considered minor. There followed a calling of names. Hudson noticed to his dismay that there was a pressing of a big red button on the Dean?s side of the desk when the name Hudson had called him was both nastier and funnier than the name he?d called Hudson.

The fact that Hudson did not view the request as minor continued to escape the attention of the Dean of the academy for the whole time that Hudson was forcibly escorted from the office by two Japanese men who appeared out of the darkness from his left and right. Men who looked as though they bench-pressed elephants for laughs.

He looked around himself.

Paragon Bores. A blur of hills, trees by the shitload and a block of Arctic permafrost in every deep breath.

There was a general store which was the only real competition for the main street mini-mart, there was also a green grocer who specialised in potatoes, having eight varieties, while there were five hardware stores, two places where you could buy stuff for animals, a place where you can buy the animals themselves, there were even several farms where you could buy ?Value Sized Bags? of animal shit.

Hudson felt a prisoner among the slowness. He was used to the pace of the city, the people rushing, the public transport which broke down, the yelling and screaming at the faceless millions, the chaotic hive. Hudson needed pandemonium to feel at home. For his holidays Hudson liked to go to other cities because for Hudson, getting away from it all meant going somewhere where it all was still going on, but it was going on for someone else. The lack of it all, busily not going on out here, made Hudson feel slightly mad. For him, quietness was not natural.

Hudson?s nightmare flickered its last puff as he walked across the road.

Fisher had arrived and was opening the police station up for business.

Hudson wondered as he stood up to leave : Who was this faceless man with a scar?

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Caitlin

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The patrol four wheel drive two-way radio went psychotic with feedback since the radios were only about ten feet apart but were designed to be used for a range of thirty miles plus.

?Hoodson, are you there??

Hudson knew immediately the feedback-deranged voice belonged to Caitlin. Look forwards. There is always something to look forwards to.

The fact that an image of Caitlin, who was a raven haired, gleamy-eyed, smiling goddess from Hudson?s most achingly raunchy dreams, had not even entered his head until this late in the morning was an indication of how neurotic he had become.lopments in his life.

But at the sound of her voice, distortion and all, he was floating above his anger laughing at himself.

Not ten minutes after meeting her, Hudson illegally gleaned from her personnel file that she was single, at least, unmarried. Computers were wonderful things, storing all kinds of useful information for a curious explorer.

Her home address was mentioned, but closer inspection revealed that the file was some years old and possibly out of date. He noticed that it was the same home address which Fisher listed. Hudson attached no significance to that fact. Caitlin openly called him Dad, although he knew that she was not really his daughter since the file listed both her parents as living in different states, both addresses were post office boxes.

To say that Hudson liked Caitlin is to simplify the matter. He was always weak in the presence of double-x chromosomes. But when those chromosomes formed someone like Caitlin with her one droopy eyelid, her wraparound smile, her shy, innocent, laughter, Hudson was transformed into mental goo.

He wanted to be fearless, to be suave and sophisticated, to say brilliantly clever and outrageous things. Yet when he got to within ten nautical miles of lipstick or perfume, without fail, he?d utter moronically stupid things which created exactly the impression he?d expressly hoped to avoid. The impression that, in fact, he was a complete bastard who had nothing but time to dream up ways of being an even bigger bastard.

?Boy you know that dress you?re wearing sure does make your head look nice and big.? had put his prom date off to an unorthodox start. He?d meant to say her hair looked as nice as her dress. How had it come out so wrong? So what if from the back Lisa Grunby?s enormous bobbing afro made her look like an upside down exclamation mark. He could have avoided any attempt at polite flattery and kept his mouth shut and he?d also have avoided having his shins massacred by a pair of expertly aimed stiletto heels.

?Yeah, Caitlin.? Hudson dribbled into the two-way radio handset, feeling a giddy tremble run through his body as it melted against the four wheel drive.

He turned down the gain and the volume on the radio set.

He could imagine her white, delicate looking face, so fragile with beauty, so full of emotion, so ripe with strength and youth. She was not incredibly thin either, which made Hudson pleased. The fashion of women of the day was to be as two dimensional as possible. Nervous in fact that any existence in the third dimension made them a target for the word fat. Hudson did not himself incline to thinking that way. His preference for women was not terribly fixed, he pretty much thought they were all honnies.

Caitlin had said his name, he could still hear it lingering in his mind.

He liked the way she said his name. With that semi-Canadian thing in her voice, what was her accent? Was she almost French sounding?

The way she spoke, it would be fair to say, drove Hudson nuts. Nobody ever said his name like Caitlin did. Whooodson.

?We?ve just had a call from a local booos driver.? she said.

?Don?t tell me,? Hudson said hoping that it didn?t sound like he was whining, ?that he?s broken down.? It sounded, after all, like his kind of luck. Right about now Hudson felt like getting oil and greasy shit all over his hands and his one and only set of work clothes about as much as he felt like sniffing one of his father?s Evil Farts of Death.[if !supportFootnotes][1][endif]

But then he regretted his words because he sensed that Caitlin had sounded... alarmed...

?No, nothing like that, the guy?s freaking right out, he says he?s fooond a dead body.?

It took Hudson a full second to make sense of what he had just heard.

He looked around at the peace and quiet around him, the twittering birds, the total lack of pump and grind of rural life at seven-thirty in the morning, the three, count them, one, two, three pedestrians on the main street.

Yesterday there had been one, and he had still been drunk from the night before. Hudson had approached the sleeping mound of newspapers and hair and had asked the snoring end if there was anything he could do to help. The man, with breath like rotted meat had replied, ?You can piss off and die.? When Hudson caught whiff of the man?s fetid breath, he feared that he?d do exactly that.

A dead body?

Hudson looked up the main street towards the distant green forested hills, the snow peaked hills. The serenity crashed down around him, the wind, the silence, the quiet.

?A body?? he said, ?You mean like a dead body? Out here?? He was always keen to show women he favoured how quick he was on the uptake.

?That?s what the driver says.? said Caitlin, ?Wrapped in a blue tarpaulin.?

Hudson thought ?Wow.? He?d never seen a real dead body before. For a city boy that was the same thing as a sheltered existence. Only once had he seen anything like a dead body. His mother?s funeral was an open casket funeral. He didn?t think of her as a real dead body exactly. She had been all made up, to look nice and peaceful, she was smiling and she looked beautiful in a tragic kind of way. Almost certainly not so with this dead body. Hudson didn?t know what to expect. There was just a wrenching dread which knotted his stomach.

?Where about?s?? he looked around himself at the total lack of excitement exhibited by the world around him.

A dog barked once or twice, but off in the distance.

?On the Northern Highway. The last stop, just before the Michigan state line.?

?You mean the body?s actually at the bus stop?? Hudson asked.

?Apparently so.? said Caitlin.

There was a long pause as Hudson wondered how a dead body could just come to be at a bus stop. He found that he could only make sense of it by assuming that the person had died waiting for the bus.

City cops were, as everybody knows, knee deep in dead bodies. And because bodies were a routine part of police work, listening to police radio in the city announcing the dead bodies all over the place was like listening to the speaking clock reading the nightly news.

Judging by Caitlin?s tone, in Paragon Falls a body was still a surprising thing. It was this tingle in her voice, this thread of surprise as much as anything else that filled Hudson with a feeling of dread he could only compare with the feeling he?d had each time he got into the car to be taken to the dentist. It was also what prevented him from making a thoughtless remark about the inefficiency of the bus service in an attempt to impress her.

?Where?s the Lieutenant?? he asked eventually.

?I don?t know.? said Caitlin. ?I thought he might be with you. Anyone else seen him??

?I?m here.? came the growling, airy gruffness of John Fisher?s voice from behind Hudson. The sound of Lieutenant John Fisher speaking was deep and fierce like a tiger?s roar, yet controlled, like he was always making the conscious decision not to punch you in the face, and you?re fucking welcome.

Hudson knew it was also supposed to be the voice of the master, the teacher, the disgruntled oral flatulance of a man whose arse he was supposed to lovingly apply tongue to. Hudson had great experience of such people in school and the academy, there they called them teachers. School had taught him not to take arseholes too seriously. Dignity and pride taught not to kiss them.

?Caitlin says we got a D.B. out just South of the Michigan state line. The body is apparently at the bus stop. Report was filed by the bus driver.? Fisher had told Hudson the day before that he liked information in summary form because it saved on unnecessary sound waves. John Fisher claimed that he liked to think and he said that he couldn?t think if Hudson was always trying to make unfriendly noise pollution.

?Then we?re wasting time.? said Fisher whose craggy, round face hid behind a pair of large reflecting sunglasses with silver coloured rims. His round, arrogant head was placed on top of a stooped body. He walked with visible effort, his legs never fully straightening. Hudson imagined that Fisher?s angry nature was probably formed by the same gruesome accident which had so damaged his body.

Reluctantly, he went around the vehicle and sat in the passengers seat.

As his seat belt buckle snapped, the ignition coil started the motor, a second later they were off. No discussions, no pleasantries... nothing.

Hudson turned around and picked his training manual off the back seat. He pretended to search for where he was up to. He pretended to find it and pretended to read. He stared at the page for a minute and then for some variation, stared at the next one. After about five pages more and a few vicious swerves later he heard the brakes squeal and after a nod from Fisher, he was allowed to get out of the 4WD for a while.

They had found the bus, which of course meant that they had found the body.

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The Smell

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It was hard for Hudson to see the bus through all the other patrol cars. It looked as though every other squad car had beaten them there.

The cops were all walking around looking serious and protective of a little bus bay in the middle of nowhere. It was kind of comical to Hudson as he looked on with his city eyes. A cynical grin warped its way across his dark face.

The bus had its hazard lights on. There was a driver whose name was Mike Wallace. Wallace was attached to the wet end of a clove cigarette. Hudson could smell the unforgettable sting in the breeze.

As Hudson and Fisher approached, the cops all swarmed about the driver of the bus. It seemed to Hudson as though the police were presenting themselves as an informal but heavily armed detaining force for the weedy, nervous man until their boss, John Fisher, arrived on the scene. Which he did presently. Hudson loped after him feeling like a dutiful lapdog to an untalented Richard the Third impersonator.

Wallace was puffing away on the cigarette like crazy. He looked like shit, his eyes like two red golf balls, his company issue blue, collared shirt half hung out, the top four buttons undone, his hands nervously rapping on his skewed hips, his thin mouth puffing madly, sucking every last possible molecule of nicotine from the clove cigarette.

Fisher said to Wallace. ?I want you to understand, that you are being recorded, a voice recording. Do I have your consent??

?Yes.?

?Okay, and you understand that your evidence may be used in a court of law and this recording will most likely constitute that evidence.?

Wallace nodded although Hudson noticed that he hadn?t followed what Fisher had said.

?It means you better tell us the truth.? said Hudson.

Fisher groaned.

?Just ignore cadet White, he?s not having a good morning.?

The guy nodded. It was all the same to him. He was trying to forget the smell.

Wallace?s voice was trembling as he spoke and the words came out quickly, in short spurts of syllables, ?There?s heaps of bodies in the cities but I get in and out of those places fast these days. They don?t pay me enough to stop at some stops I?ll tell you. I never expected to see one here.? He also mentioned that he?d seen two dead people up real close before, he?d found one once, on his bus. The other lying in a gutter, he?d frozen to death outside a church with a sign around his neck which read Help Me God.?That was pretty creepy.? He said of the experience.

Fisher asked the driver to describe as exactly as possible the events which led to the discovery of the body. Fisher listened with great interest as Wallace, blessed with an unattractive face, multiple chins cascading from his neck to his chest, went on at great length about how he drove every day, the same route, the same time and this time it was no different to any other time.

But, he said he always pulled into this particular stop, because if there happened to be someone actually standing there, waiting for a bus...

?I can?t see them until the last second. So what I do is slow right down before I turn this here bend,? he pointed to the sharp turn in the road with a twitching yellow, cigarette stained finger, ?and prepare to stop the bus just in case there?s someone there.?

?Uh-huh.? said Fisher interested. ?That?s sensible.? he added. ?Would you say that it?s a popular stop, does it get used much??

?No sir.? said the bus driver. ?Quite the opposite is what I?d say. I?d say it?s the least popular stop on the whole run. I don?t even know why the company put the damned thing here. It?s not really near anywhere, there?s a stop in Paragon Falls and another in Ulsa, but this particular stop is kinda out here in the middle of nowhere. But because the I gotta stop all the damned same? He swept his hands out like he was conducting an orchestra. He waved them past the snow laden evergreens and broadleaf forest. There was not a connecting road or an intersection for miles. There wasn?t even a farmhouse or a run down anthill close by.

?I remember there was this guy who used to work for the company and he once said that they put it here because of some crazy old federal law which said that the bus company had to have a certain number of stops in every state to call itself a national service, or something like that. They didn?t have enough stops here in Wisconsin because a lot of the country is not yet built up being as cold as a polar bear?s butt, if you know what I mean, so ah, yeah heh-heh anyway, they just put one here, in the middle of nowhere, just for the hell of it. Just to make up the numbers. Something like that.?

Fisher nodded. ?Sounds almost dumb enough to be true.? he growled.

?I been driving this run at this time of day for about six months now. I do the late afternoon run too, runnin? the other way and in the whole time I done that run I?ve had to stop here to pick someone up no more than ten times. Maybe fifteen, but fifteen would be tops.?

?That?s good,? said Fisher, ?So anyway, you slowed down before you turned the last bend in the road, you came to the stop slowly, noticed the tarpaulin and so decided to stop your bus??

?Yeah, that?s right.?

?When did you realise that it was actually a body?? asked Fisher.

?When I opened the doors.? said the driver. ?As soon as I opened the doors I could smell it. As soon as I smelt it, I knew that there was something dead in the tarp. I pulled on the hand brake, got outta the bus, went over to the tarp, holding my nose, my eyes were watering, I remember that, and I got close enough to see her hair poking through and I got on the radio straight away.?

?Excellent. Did you touch anything, roughly how close did you get to the body?? Fisher asked.

?Didn?t even make it to the edge of the shelter.?

Wallace meant the concrete bus shelter which still looked quite new.

The roof of the shelter was a concrete slab supported by the three upright concrete slabs which also formed the side and back walls. If there was no wind when it rained you could stay dry if you stood on the seat and hoped that it didn?t give way. The shelter was not much to look at so somebody had painted it pale blue. At least the colour made it stand out from the scrub which lined the road, and the trees which made this part of the highway so treacherous at night.

There was a similar bus stop a few twists up the road but on the other side of the highway.

The East side was the side heading out of Wisconsin into Detroit. Hudson lamented privately that if the body had been dumped on a stop a few more miles up the road, the next bus stop along and it would have been someone else?s jurisdiction.

Fisher let the driver go, thanking him for all of his help, telling him that he?d done very well in leaving the crime scene fairly clean and that hopefully he?d never hear from them again. The driver got into his bus, tucking his shirt in his pants on the way, making him look like a wretch, but a moderately well turned out wretch. After a few of the police cars were moved, the bus was able to leave.

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A Smudge of Blue

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Fisher didn?t intend Hudson to get near the dead body at first. He was totally clear about it.

?Don?t go near the damned thing. You?ll just have to wait. Get in the car and read your damn manual.? He grumbled.

He swaggered off leaving a quiet chuckle hanging faintly on the breeze and Hudson standing at the open door of the 4WD. Hudson climbed in and slammed the door behind him. ?Arsehole.? he barked to himself as he watched Fisher?s brown pants and brown shirt glare grotesquely against the pale blue of the shelter.

Fisher then made a showy search of the crime scene. Hudson watched him work from the passenger?s side of the squad All Terrain 4WD. Hudson had been told it was Fisher?s 4WD - the details were important. The crime scene belonged to him too.

He had sealed off the area with flickering neon yellow and red tape with the word RADIOACTIVE written all over it. Hudson let out a silent scream as he watched Fisher strutting.

Fisher had a camera and he was ferreting around taking flash photographs of the body from some strange angles, crouching with a wince. He photographed the ground around the bus shelter and the road, which led both North and South. He photographed both directions.

After prowling the area around the shelter, and with considerable effort, Fisher then scrambled on top of the bus shelter and had a look around. Hudson watched critically as Fisher took some photos from up there too. He then carefully climbed down and spent ten full minutes pacing backwards and forwards on the roadside with his aggravated limp. Just pacing, wearing little goose-stepping grooves in the snowy slush two or three feet from Hudson's nose.

Hudson became bored with watching Fisher after the first few minutes of pacing and so tried hard to absorb himself in looking at the training manual while thinking of witty things to say to Caitlin in rather convoluted and unlikely situations. Hudson was thus nose deep in a demented fantasy and a bunch of words he wasn?t reading when Fisher completed his assessment and sent some of the other officers off to their respective duties.

Fisher eventually came over to the four wheel drive.

?Get out.? he said. Hudson got out.

?I have looked for prints and taken photos and made moulds of certain bits of evidence which will be pretty obvious to you when you look around. I have surveyed and then tidied the area and left it fresh for you. I want you to now go through the and come back and tell me, step by step, how you would proceed.? His reflecting sunglasses, hiding those smug, little eyes.

Hudson looked at him.

?Make it as quick as you can. We can?t touch the body, the coroner?s boys will be coming to pick it up. They?ve just been contacted, so they?ll be here in about? fifteen minutes at most. If you want to be anything more than a shooter, then go... investigate the murder.? He gestured with an impatient hand.

As he walked towards Fisher?s crime scene, Hudson noticed Fisher slouching against the 4WD bonnet. Fisher was going to watch him, score him and judge him. Just like at the academy. Just like at school.

The flickering yellow and red ?RADIOACTIVE? tape nicely pegged out the area requiring investigation. At the centre of the flapping was the little blue bus shelter, designed for protection from sun and rain. On the seat, stretched out lengthways lay the body.

It was nothing from a distance. Wrapped in an everyday blue, trailer tarpaulin. It was layed out on the seat of the blue shelter, like a roll of carpet. Stretched out. All blue and innocent.

Then the smell hit Hudson so hard that without any warning he gagged on his breakfast. Chicken and eggs. He could taste chicken, eggs and bile. He nearly threw up but with enormous effort he held it in. He took a moment to steady himself.

The body in the blue tarpaulin was a woman. He could tell from the hair. It had spray in it. He remembered thinking how odd that seemed. That the hair of this dead woman should have glitter hairspray through it.

Blonde hair, dark at the roots, cascading blonde hair. ?Oh god, no.? thought Hudson.

Oh no. His skin tingled. He got goosebumps on his arms, his nostrils flared and he started to sweat as an image forced its way into his mind...

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The knife went into the dark skin, her piercing scream rang loud in his head. The feel of soft carpet between his fingers. The blood and the flashing of bloodstained steel whistling backwards and forwards through the air...

What dream did that image come from? He wondered in shock.

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Hudson held his breath and tried to keep his balance.

He looked blurrily at the shelter and the grassy bank rising up behind it forming the side of a hill.

The same terrible image came back as he closed his eyes to try to focus them better, the flash of light on steel, the dark skin, the red of blood, the scream, almost silent, the feeling of carpet fading and Hudson smelt the body on the shelter and again he felt a wave of nausea as he opened his eyes. He was breathing... rapid and shallow.

?Stay calm.? he told himself. Breathe deeeeeeeply. Take control of my breath.

He looked around himself and only saw the shelter as a smudge of blue which was next to a stripe of black, the black which cut through the sea of greens, whites browns and yellows.

He looked at his feet. He saw the trailing stampede of snow-frozen muddy foot prints around him. He was careful to step around them. A snowflake fell on his shoe. A few more flittered slowly down, frozen, floating rain. He blinked and took another deep breath. Whatever that vision of steel and sound was, he would have to deal with it later. He found himself trying to deny how deeply it had rattled him. The scream... the sound echoing in the well of his mind.

He felt his feet and legs returning to him, he felt himself regain control of his body and he wondered when he had lost the feeling of control. He hadn?t noticed. He wondered how much time had passed. Slowly, Hudson?s vision cleared and in a minute he was back at the shelter, wondering what the hell life was doing to him now.

Remembering that everything was evidence, Hudson tried not to disturb the tarpaulin as he looked at her.

It was hard because the tarpaulin was tucked underneath the body. To unwrap it you would have to lean over her and pull the tarp out. She was not covered by a tarpaulin, but cocooned in it.

He struggled hard to see what clues there were without unwrapping the corpse otherwise he could not see why it had to be a murder? Where were the signs? Sure it was a dead body at a bus stop, but without seeing the corpse? how could he know she?d been killed. Never presume you know a cause of death until you?ve seen all results from all the different autopsy labs. First rule of proceedure.

He made a quick examination of the tarpaulin and an inspection of the shelter. There were many muddy footprints with plaster mould stains on them, footprints in a dance spilling on to the cement floor surrounds which formed the base of the shelter. Muddy footprints which had no detectable pattern to his eyes. A thrashing of feet, of the same sized boot. He could not deduce from the foot prints what action had taken place here, their dance was too complex. And as hard as he tried, he could not make sense of them.

He moved to the road and looked at the thick, black tyre tracks which appeared from the edge of the road and came to a point where upon they took off from the gravelly surrounds around the bus stop, and then spilled their muddy tracks out on to the opposite side of the road, heading North, towards the state line and, presuambly into Michigan.

?Hmmm.? Hudson said to himself. He thought for a moment.

He looked around the bus stop. There was nothing else except a six foot tall, self standing metal trimmed stand with a clear perspex window containing a company bus timetable and a sizeable plastic rubbish bin without a lid. He looked in the rubbish bin but it was empty. There were cigarette butts all over the floor of the shelter, and judging by the amount of decay of the butts they were butts from several months ago. He saw no point in sifting through cigarette butts. There was nothing he could learn from them.

Hudson re-examined the tarpaulin. He was satisfied there was no more to be learnt from the scene. He refrained from leaping to the top of the bus shelter, although it did occur to him that perhaps he was expected to.

Hudson thought that he had a good enough view of the place from where he stood, the expanse of trees, the gravel on the side of the road. The bus shelter had been well placed so that you felt as though you were well away from civilisation. The road was flat and empty but it curved in such a way at this point that both directions North and South all ended in trees as the road curved in successive dog-leg bends. Four in all. The fairly high tree cover all added to the illusion that you were in the middle of a forest which went on forever, but a few miles North lay the town of Ulsa. To the South, there lay a few miles of winding road that went nowhere fast. Well, the road went to Paragon Falls, which to Hudson was the same thing as nowhere.

He took a deep breath in through his mouth and walked back to the car. The gravel crunched underfoot.

?How did you go?? asked Fisher, with the eyeless grin of his.

?Well there isn?t much to see.? Hudson began. ?The body?s obviously all wrapped up. I didn?t want to disturb it. I...?

?Yeah yeah, I know... tell me what you did find.?

?The tyre marks.?

?Yes??

?They head towards the state line.?

?So??

?Well I think that if the tyre marks were made by the killer then we lost them before we had a chance.?

?You could be right.? Fisher said in a way that made it clear that he was definitely not. ?Find anything else??

?Nothing else which seemed out of the ordinary.?

Fisher?s left eyebrow raised above his glasses.

?But?? Asked Hudson, who wondered if he was going to have to get used to hearing the word ?but?.

?But you trampled the evidence when looking at it, you missed every good clue there was, and so you missed possibilities to look for further evidence. Your lack of any examination whatsoever of the body is understandable, you don?t know what you?re doing and that body is the most vital link we have to what is going on, but your analysis of the crime scene was really bad. You have a lot to learn. There is a heap of information and you?re missing it all because you just don?t take things in. You?re there but you?re not looking.? Fisher said it without anger which frustrated Hudson all the more because Hudson knew that Fisher?s words were also true.

Hudson thought hard about his paycheck. No the money wasn?t that good, nothing like what he?d been promised. He thought about Caitlin instead.

?Otherwise,? Fisher said, seeing Hudson?s look of complete failure, ?You did all right. Our job here is more or less done. The body itself we have to leave to the coroner. He?ll determine the cause of death.?

They sat in the car and watched as the corpse was placed into the coroner?s car by some of the lackeys, guys who wore sunglasses. Aspiring John Fishers from the looks of them.

The body, with the coroner?s report, wouldn?t be ready for a matter of hours, maybe many hours, then Hudson and Fisher would be inspecting both body and report with a fine toothed microscope. Hudson knew it. He dreaded it. Dreaded the smell.

Fisher started the engine to his patrol car. John Denver was on the stereo. Rocky Mountain High. In his lap was his training manual.

Aaaaaaaarrrrrghhh, thought Hudson. They?ve got me surrounded.

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The Biggest Fuck Up in History

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General Armstrong Alva Geddin was in shit so deep that a fleet of crap resistant submarines wouldn?t be able to haul him out with a fifty mile long tow rope. His hands shook with fear as he passed through the x-ray machine, the metal detector and the bug detector and with a press of a fingerprint, was admitted into building seventeen.

Seventeen was a tall building, which only appeared squat because although it was over thirty storeys tall, it took nearly forty minutes to drive around its perimeter. It was a cement slab of a building, a giant house brick lying on its side, a shrine to dull, featureless architecture. The locals had initially mocked The Pentagon in Washington by naming building seventeen The Rectangle, but soon after it was seen on an aerial photo it was dubbed The Great Wall and the name stuck. It wasn?t the tallest building in Pearl Harbour, but it easily had the greatest volume.

General Geddin tried to stride with a certain amount of purpose as he passed a gaggle of young, well-groomed mostly female officers. They saluted him as he went past and he stuck his right hand to his forehead in reply as he oggled their breasts. He hoped that they couldn?t tell that he was more drunk than Oliver Reed at a free champagne breakfast.

Alone in the elevator, he slumped against a corner and gave himself the luxury of a fart. As it transpired, it was colossal. Not only was it prolonged, lasting eighteen whole storeys but it was powerful enough to make his ears pop from the change in air pressure inside the tiny chamber, loud enough to be mistaken for a local volcanic eruption and so pungent that it could melt diamond.

?Thank Christ.? he murmured in his strong New Orleans drawl.

Leaving the elevator on the thirtieth floor, he staggered down a brightly lit corridor. He pressed his fingerprint against the lock on his office door and swept into the room, leaving a toxic gaseous encore outside to frighten the secretaries and prevent other staff from bothering him.

He sat at his large desk, overlooking the harbour, and opened a drawer. He pulled out a flask of scotch and took a sip. He reached for his phone and pressed a button.

It rang for almost a minute before it was answered.

?You again...? said Clarence Penrose in a manner which implied that he was too busy for anything but the rudest brevity. Geddin could hear the unmistakable sound of a plane?s engines in the background. Scrambled calls never came with video images. Names were never mentioned in conversations like this and voices were electronically distorted so that even if the call was recorded, it would be impossible for anyone listening in to know who was saying what.

?I want an update.? said Geddin.

?There?s not really anything to add.? replied Penrose.

?Do we know who?s got it?? Even Geddin, who had no mind for tact, was wary of mentioning the missing disk over the phone.

?Still no. Adams is looking at all the options right now.?

?Options? How many fuggen options are there??

?Scores. It could be anyone. The National Security Agency, the FBI, the APA, Mossad, MI5, Yazzuka, the Mafia or the fucking PTA... who knows - it could even be the freak who dumped the body at the bus shelter, although frankly I think that?s unlikely.? Penrose?s voice jumped once or twice as his plane went through some turbulence.

?So do I.? said Geddin taking another swill from the flask. ?We still don?t know if there even is a freak. That whole crash thing is probably just some well staged bullshit and the diced up body at the busstop is just some bonus theatrics to make us chase our own arses around in a circle. Someone found out about... the thing and decided to fuggen steal it. Blew the tyre out with a bullet probably. There?s no maniac. He?s a ghost. And even if he is real, it doesn?t mean he?s got the... you know... it doesn?t mean he?s got it.?

?All the same it has to be considered.? said Penrose testily. ?Adams is going to eliminate that possibility first. We gotta hope there?s a maniac and that he?s stolen it. It would make everything easier after all. I?d rather it was a nutcase than a foreign government or a local agency. Going after a single nut, we wouldn?t have to stir so much shit to the surface.?

?It ain?t the FBI. We?d be dead already. Let?s just pray it?s not the NSA.? said Geddin.

If the NSA had the disk then the shit at the surface would be so dense that you could build a house on it. Even though the president had less of a grasp on reality than Charles Manson off lithium, it was doubtful that the NSA would consider it in the interests of national security to blow the chief executive?s head off his shoulders.

?McGovern?s just purged the NSA too.?

Penrose was momentarily silent. Why did Geddin always do this? When he was drunk it was as though his mind sought out the most depressing and obvious thing to say as a matter of policy. ?Well, I?m giving it another twelve hours and if there?s no progress then we?ll move ahead with Crossfire.?

Geddin didn?t like the sound of that at all.

?Twelve hours? We should do it now. You should do it. You lost the fuggen thing. Kill the cocksucker and do it now.?

?Calm the hell down.? said Penrose who now wanted to kill the president just as much as Geddin but was angry because life just wasn?t that simple. ?And anyway you lost it. Jess lost it. I never touched it.?

Penrose knew that he?d made a mistake mentioning Jess. Geddin had loved her and he wouldn?t take well to the implication that she was to blame for the biggest fuck up in history by hitting a power pole at seventy-five miles an hour.

To Penrose?s surprise, Geddin let it slide.

?We might not get another chance to do it. We have to kill him. Fuggenhell, if the NSA do have it, we?ll be dead in the next two days anyway.?

?Yes but if we kill him, there?ll be war within the next two hours.? Penrose was getting angry. ?He?s got us by the balls, we can?t afford to keep him alive but we can?t afford to kill him. We?re screwed either way. The only way out is to find it before he does. Twelve more hours. We?ll know what we have to do by then.?

Geddin hung up the phone in disgust. Penrose was an idiot. There was no maniac. What were the chances? The only evidence of plan B in the whole fuggen universe was what... intercepted by a random nutcase because of a random fuggen car crash?

Geddin took a deep swig of the scotch in the flask. Far, far more likely that some fuggen bastard had found out about Crossfire, about the disk and so they?d killed Jess, planted that body at the bus shelter and that he and Penrose were next in line for a random bullet in their random skulls. The fuggen NSA had the disk. They were poaching it. Geddin knew it to his core.

General Geddin got off his chair and walked across the room. He opened the door and farted into the corridor again. This fart had more substantial friends in the large intestine. He shoved the flask in his inside jacket pocket and wobbled towards the men?s room with haste.

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One Seriously Snaky Road

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Once inside the car, Fisher drove North, away from Paragon Falls. Hudson spoke to Fisher several times but Fisher seemed unconcerned by his comments. In fact he totally ignored them.

Being ignored for John Denver is always a socially crippling feeling.

Fisher instead bickered about red tape. Her explained that he was pissed off that he couldn?t look at the body before the coroner.

A few bends down the road they came to a very slow stop. The brakes squeaked.

Fisher turned the ignition key off and stepped out of the car.

?Get out.? He said.

Hudson got out.

Fisher pointed to the front of the car. Hudson couldn?t tell what Fisher was trying to show him. He didn?t know what to expect.

?Of your two most serious errors, not climbing on top of the bus shelter because you thought I was an arsehole was your biggest. From up there I could see the road off in the distance. I could also see the crime scene in a totally different way. At first all I noticed was how nice it looked, because the trees look nice this time of year, just before the last frost comes on like a bitch. But when I really took it in I noticed some things about it.

?Firstly it?s one seriously snaky road. It curves and bends all over the place.?

?Right.? Hudson said. ?So how is that new?? he thought.

?So I thought to myself why would the guy dump a body at that shelter? Of all places? At almost any point North or South he could have dumped it with better visibility. Did he want it to be found?

?I say he, by the way because it takes a man to do something this weird. So where was I? Oh yeah, the road. When you stand at that shelter you are at a virtual mid-point between curves which makes it a crazy place to dump a body. Especially one so nicely wrapped. You go to all this effort to wrap a body to ditch it in a stupid place?? said Fisher.

?So what?s that got to do with these tyre marks?? Asked Hudson confused.

?Well I saw them from the roof of the bus shelter. Up on the shelter I was able to look through the dog leg bends, which you can?t do at ground level and I noticed these strange tyre marks on the road right here.?

?What?s so strange about them??

?Look at them. Look hard.?

Hudson walked around them several times. He could still smell bile on his breath. It was still incredibly cold. He tried to read the tyre print.

?Someone?s come to a sort of a stop and they?ve changed direction.? said Hudson eventually.

?I see you have an eye for understatement.?

Hudson relaxed a little. ?Well what would you say?? Hudson asked.

?Well? a car gunning it North has suddenly slammed on the skids, screeching to a stop with its rear swinging a full 90 degrees, more like 100 degrees as a matter of fact. Either way the guy?s clearly stopped in one hell of a hurry.

?He?s then, some time later accelerated in the opposite direction to where he was originally going. In fact he?s spun the tyres as he?s taken off so he?s pumped the accelerator and dropped the clutch. So he?s in a real hurry now, and notice that he?s gone South, towards the bus shelter. Look with your own eyes, you can see, there?s your proof. You can see it in the darkness of the tyre track, you can see where the tyres stopped spinning, you can see where they gripped, you can see everything.?

?So why are these made by the same car as the guy who dumped the body was driving? I mean a hundred cars must come along here every day. That?s fourteen hundred cars every fortnight.? Hudson pointed out.

?There are two things. Firstly the tyres are about the same width, also not forgetting that we came past here yesterday on your grand tour. These tyre marks weren?t here then. What we can see of the tread matches, treads are very distinctive things if you are capable of reading them carefully. In this case, we don?t have enough to be one hundred percent sure that the same car made both tracks, but ninety nine is close to where we are. There?s something else.?

?The second reason.?

?Look up that way.? said Fisher, pointing North.

Hudson, who was expecting Fisher to say ?reason two...? was confused for a second and could not get his bearings.

?What? I don?t see anything but the sign for the state line.? He said eventually.

?You don?t see those other tyre marks in the snow? In the distance??

?Yeah?? He couldn?t.

?And the broken glass?? Fisher was still pointing. ?See how the road reflects too much light there. That ain?t snow. That?s broken glass.?

?Yeah. - Oh.?

?They?ll need to spend some of their hard earned taxes fixing that power pole too.?

Hudson was never so surprised to see clues all around him in his whole life. It was like Fisher was just pulling them out of his... hat.

?None of the glass is cleared, the power pole has not been replaced, the fence has not been repaired, there are indications the accident was a fairly recent one.? Fisher said. His smile never once leaving his face.

Hudson thought how strange an image that was. A smile from looking at an accident while on the trail of a killer...

?Hey.? Hudson said suddenly.

?What?? Fisher asked.

?The accident! Police are at the accident site! The killer must have seen them! So he turns jams on the skids, goes back south, dumps the body at the shelter and heads north again, cruising past the cops.?

?Possibly.? said Fisher. ?If the Michigan cops were at the accident site it is critically important that we should ask to speak to whoever was there.? Fisher studied Hudson?s face as he spoke. Looking for a reaction. Like hell we should speak to anyone, he thought. This is a state line. This crime just became a Federal issue. We hand it to McGovern?s Cronies and they?ll screw it all up. With a smile.

?So why, why go back to dump the body to get past the police, why not just turn around and keep going South?? said Hudson. ?Hang on to the body. Abort mission. Go home.?

Fisher smiled.

?Well that?s a good point. It can obviously only mean that the body was not his priority, something else was and it pulled him South to dump the body so that he could then go North. We can?t really even speculate about what his priority was yet. But so far the progress is good. I?m willing to bet that the vehicle the murderer was driving was some kind of van or utility truck with its right rear wheel slightly out of alignment. I would also say with absolute certainty that the killer is either quite old, or possibly ill or even partially crippled.?

?YOU CAN TELL THAT ALL FROM THE TYRE TRACKS?? said Hudson, exercising his right to incredulity far louder than was necessary. Birds scattered at the sound of his indignance.

?No, the wheel alignment I can see from the uneven tread left in the tracks, but the type of truck I?m deducing from the wrapping of the corpse, and the fact that vans are notoriously the vehicle of preference of guys who transport bodies. For obvious reasons.?

?The wrapping of the corpse...? Hudson said the word again but it wasn?t making the picture any clearer to him.

?Yes, the corpse Hudson.? Hudson felt strange. It was the first time Fisher had used his name. It sounded weird for some reason. Maybe because previous names had been tokens of praise and high esteem such as loser, fuckweed, and, Hudson?s personal favourite, shitstick. Hudson would have accused Fisher of meaning the remark in a racist fashion, but Fisher was decidedly unracist in his abuse. He abused everybody. Even white people were shitsticks.

?My god, you didn?t notice the poles. Gotta say Hudson, that?s not your best work so far. Okay, they were two poles, underneath the body, like a crude stretcher basically, as though it were designed to be carried by two people, or maybe a machine of some kind.

?The poles don?t bend, they had no joins. She had to be transported in a vehicle in which she could lay flat - the most obvious options are a van of some kind or a utility truck. I guess a van because it offers greater privacy. A body which is wrapped with two poles in a tarpaulin simply cannot be accommodated in the average sedan. It?s the wrong shape. It?s no way to transport a body so interestingly wrapped up as this one. It wouldn?t fit even diagonally in the average sedan boot, also this girl was pretty tall, she was taller than the poles.? Hudson tried to take this in.

He had missed a lot and was going to deserve every bit of this.

?Also, if you look at each pole you notice that they are symmetrically positioned on either side of the spine, under the back, to give optimum support to the corpse. That corpse wasn?t placed - it was dumped here. It was going to be placed elsewhere.? said Fisher. ?But there was something else I found when I examined the corpse.?

?What?? Hudson asked.

Fisher?s brow was wrinkled. This, I can safely tell him, he thought. There?s a lot to hide, but he?ll learn this soon enough anyway, so there?s no harm in it.

?The body had its arms and feet firmly bound in such a way so as to be able to be... suspended by these poles.?

?Uh-huh.?

?If you felt through the tarpaulin, you could feel the knots tying the arms and legs on to the poles.?

?Right.?

?And there was a coil of rope, wound not around the leg, and not the arm but the pole. You spin the pole and the rope unwinds itself.?

?So what, maybe it was left over rope.? said Hudson.

?Yes, that was what I first thought too, but each pole had the exact same number of coils of rope and the two poles were of the same diameter, so all the coils of rope are the same length when uncoiled.?

?What could it mean? Why suspend a body??

Why indeed, thought Fisher. ?We need to see the body before we can be sure what he did to her.? he said.

Hudson didn?t like the sound of that at all. Fisher took out his camera and he walked around the place and took more photographs.

?What about the quite old or crippled??

?That, I want you to figure out.? said Fisher, choosing his words with incredible caution and precision.

Hudson, mistaking Fisher?s caution for harrassment, simply felt picked on.

?That?s enough of this place.? said Fisher as he got into the passenger?s seat, which left Hudson, for the first time behind the wheel. He looked at Fisher as Fisher started to speak.

?Where to??

?Right.. Let?s go see a car crash.?

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Blood in the Snow

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?When the car hit that pole it must have been crushed to the size of a sardine tin.? Fisher croaked after a moment?s thought. Hudson grunted his agreement.

It was a grizzly thought. Whoever was in that car would have had their body crushed and if they survived that, somehow, they?d live long enough to be burned to death.

Fisher continued to scour what remained of the wreckage. Hudson was looking at the power cables on the ground, the cables which the pole was supposed to be supporting. The cables were instead severed. Hudson expected them to be twitching, sparking angrily, but they were dead and limp.

There was so much metal and glass on the road it looked like every single window on both cars had smashed. Hudson knew in fact that he was staring at the wreckage of a traffic disaster. He suddenly felt the urge not to look. He hated what it implied. More bodies.

?Will you look at this?? said Fisher.

?You got it.? Hudson got off his haunches and walked over to where Fisher had dawdled, some thirty feet away from the felled pole. ?What am I looking at??

?A body?s come to rest here. Someone in that car wasn?t wearing a seatbelt. When the car hit the pole they went through the windscreen. There?s blood in the snow here. We could have a survivor from the sardine tin.?

It didn?t seem likely. Fisher?s voice sounded more hopeful than anything.

?And look. Water has been poured on the bitumen to wash away the blood and it?s trickled towards the roadside and stained the snow.?

?So why would someone wash blood off the road?? said Hudson, his shoulders still tense at the images of a head hitting bitumen, a car exploding.

?That, Hudson, would seem to be the most obvious question.?

Fisher was silent as he took a few more photographs and once satisfied, he was off walking in another direction.

Hudson stood and looked at the discoloured snow. It might mean that the local police had washed the road. After they had picked up the body. It seemed sort of a decent thing to do.

?Okay Hudson,? said Fisher, ?What next??

?We contact the Ulsa police.?

And bring in the FBI. No way. He?s not ready to know. He still hates me like a rash and might turn me in for screwing around with his precinct selection form...

?That?s not such a hot idea.? said Fisher.

?Why?? asked Hudson.

?Because it?s bad political thinking. We?re going back to where we are police before we talk to them. Detective Stone won?t give us a scraping from the shit stains on his long-johns until we have the right form, and until he recognises our authority. And in this life, we are only police on the other side of that state line over there. We have to go to our office, surrounded by all our stuff, before he co-operates.?

?That?s stupid.? said Hudson. ?It?s only a line for Christ?s sake. It?s not like we?re pissing on his front lawn.?

?Maybe not, but pissing on his lawn is exactly how he?d see our little intrusion on to his turf. If we go and see him without leaving a calling card a week in advance, it may not be pissing, but it would be like unzipping our flies and pulling our dicks out. Besides, for other reasons, we should be tactful about how we speak to him. You know, the FBI.? Fisher explained, testing the water.

Let?s see how he responds.

?This is soooo stupid. We must be ten minutes from his office and at least fifteen from ours, but we have to turn around and do things the long drawn out way, just to suck up to his little ego? That?s insane.? Fisher nodded the whole time Hudson went through his spiel.

?Hudson, on that side of the line, we have the right to shoot a man, this side of the line, he does. There we are superman, here the ground is made of kryptonite. It?s nothing unusual, it?s just how the politics is right now.? said Fisher dipping a toe in a little deeper and swirling the waters.

Hudson grunted. ?Oh.? he said. At the sound of the word politics, Hudson?s mind put on its pyjamas and got ready for bed.

Fisher pulled his toe out of the water and put it back in his mouth.

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Deafening Silence

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When Fisher and Hudson got back to the police station they found that they could not reach the Ulsa police by videophone or CB radio. They considered their options.

?The net.?

?That?s a very bad idea.? said Fisher as a giant shiver passed down his spine causing him aches which he tried to conceal.

?But? oh? the media??

?Well, anyone.? said Fisher. ?The net is much too public. My daughter?s a print journalist. She?s the only journalist I like and the only one I trust.? Fisher knew that the media would swoop in and do the FBI?s job for them. They?d be more interested in the fact that Fisher was a policeman with a history of business deals and long and frequently honoured friendships with Japanese than anything else. The first thing to suffer would be the details of the case he was working on. He?d register in their scopes as prime newsworthy fodder and they?d never think before firing.

?You want this kept secret.?

?Of course.? Fisher seemed shocked that there should be any alternative. ?The media are dangerous. Besides, once they?re involved we have to waste a lot of time fending them off our investigation.?

Hudson, who was of the opinion that the media could be useful, possibly even helpful, drummed his fingers on the desk petulantly.

Fisher was lost in thought. I can hardly say anything! I don?t trust him further than I could puke him.

?You were right Hudson?? Fisher lied ?We should have gone when we had the chance.?

Hudson thinking that the point should be made said, ?Should we go to Ulsa now? The coroner hasn?t finished his report yet.?

?There are things we can get on with here. Just as important.?

Fisher reasoned that it might be another day until they got news from the next town. But at least they would be getting the coroner?s report soon. Any hour now.

Fisher was looking at Hudson from behind his glasses, Hudson could feel it. He could feel Fisher?s resistance to any communication with Stone, every suggestion had been stonewalled. Hudson wondered what he was not being told. And why.

?There?s a lot more you missed.?

Fisher flipped the filmdisk into Hudson?s hand. Trust is a thing you earn. Fisher thought to himself. I must deserve his trust.

Hudson took it over to the computer and pushed it into a slot on the front of his disassembled machine.

An instant later the screen filled with sixty colourful squares, layered sixteen to a screen, and four screens deep. Many of them were of the hair and the body. He clicked on the next screen and sixteen new photographs came up. These included the ones taken from the top of the bus shelter.

Hudson looked intently at one of the two photographs which looked North. He looked on the sweeping, turning road and there, sure enough, was a small smudge, a small mark. He enhanced it by dragging his mouse to a square around the little area and asked the computer to blow the image up by 300 percent. He sent it to the printer for a hard copy.

Seconds later a colour print was in Hudson?s hand.

Tyre tracks. From the photograph you could almost make out a missing power pole farther on. Past the tyre tracks. Everywhere there were traces of evidence all over and he was only seeing them in hindsight because Fisher had seen them first.

Hudson sighed again as he realised that if you were observant enough you could see it all there, from the damned roof of the bus stop.

There were eleven photos taken from the roof of the bus shelter. Three facing North, two facing South and six looking down, and it soon became apparent that from the above view of the tyre tracks at the foot of the bus stop, that the car which had made them had made them by reversing right up to the bus stop which suggested the action of unloading something and then moving onwards, namely one dead body.

In fact, Hudson realised suddenly, looking from above had changed the crime scene in to something which looked frozen in time, the patterns of footprints, indentations in the gravel and dust which had settled so well on the concrete base of the shelter. Hudson looked at the last photograph from the roof of the bus stop. He could see the bus timetable in it.

From this photograph he could see something with unmistakable clarity. There were muddy footprints at the base of the plastic window holding the timetable. The killer had stood there, at the foot of the timetable and looked at it.

A chill jolted down Hudson?s spine. He found that if he closed his eyes he could smell the smell, hear the wind and the crunch of gravel underfoot and opening his eyes again, he looked at the photograph and saw the embedded footprints. He realised that the killer had not merely looked at the timetable, he had made a point of going over to look at it. Calm. Deliberate. Familiar with the smell of the dead burning in his nostrils.

Hudson felt Fisher looking over his shoulder at the screen.

?We were lucky it didn?t rain or snow much after they left the crime scene.? he said. ?We?ve got a lot of footprints.? said Fisher.

?How many people?s footprints did you count?? Hudson asked.

?Well the bus driver left some I noticed, but only around the edge, but once you take away his footprints... only one.? said Fisher. ?A one man job.?

?Why a one man job?? asked Hudson. ?How do you know there weren?t three other guys in the van??

Must not tell Hudson everything, the best reason will do.

?Because wouldn?t at least a second man have helped? It was a heavy burden. If not to help move the body then why were they along for the ride? One set of footprints almost certainly means one man, besides you forget he was old and infirmed or crippled. If there was a second man, and I consider this ridiculous, then he would have been the driver, staying in the car to make possible a fast getaway. These photos scream out that it was the driver who did all the work. Look, not only can you see what he does you can see the order he does it in.?

?See here how the timetable is around the passenger?s side of the van, that is assuming of course that the van has reversed into the bay to minimise the work, so that the rear of the van faces the bus stop.?

?Now, if it were the passenger who was doing the work they would have been faced with the timetable the second they got out of the van. The timetable was so important to the killer, that surely, if it had been the passenger doing the work, then they would more likely have gone straight to the timetable before unloading the body. But the footprints say the timetable was consulted after unloading the body. It was consulted as an afterthought because whoever dumped the body didn?t see the timetable straight away so it did not make them think to consult it until the work was done.?

?And how do you know that the killer consulted the timetable last??

?See how the steps going towards the timetable are so much closer together than they were here.? Fisher pointed to the footprints on the screen. It was clear. The footprints going towards the timetable were noticeably closer together than the other footprints. ?The fact that the footprints are closer together almost certainly means that the person is now tired.?

Hudson nodded. ?Okay.? he said.

?Very tired.? prompted Fisher. ?Look how both feet drag, grind into the dirt, his legs feel like lead now.?

?Old or crippled?? said Hudson.

?Bingo.? said Fisher.

?Or badly out of shape.? said Hudson.

?Exactly.? said Fisher.

?So, here you see that after the person staggered over to the timetable, they went on to the road and the footprint trail is lost. They probably went around the front of the car to the driver?s side, got in the vehicle and drove off. Go to photo 37.?

Hudson selected photo 37 from the gallery. It filled the screen.

It was a photograph of a bus timetable, but the numbers were not legible because a huge flash from the camera had reflected beautifully off the surface of the plastic cover of the timetable itself.

Hudson was about to say that he couldn?t read the timetable when he realised that the reflection of the flash had been an intentional effect. There, reflecting light so slightly differently, was a long, horizontal smear mark, ending in a nice, unmistakable fingerprint.

?Oh my god.? said Hudson.

Fisher traced the finger print on his screen with his own index finger. ?Beautiful, isn?t it.? he said, ?I first saw it when I was standing looking at the body. I?m so glad this photograph worked out. I want to show it to my wife.?

?But how do you know that it?s the killer?s fingerprint?? Hudson asked. ?I mean how many people use their index finger to check a bus timetable? That print could belong to anyone.?

?The point you make is valid, and the finger mark in itself is no great thrill. It is the placement of the finger marks which suggests so strongly that it is connected to the body. We know from the bus service timetable itself that the last bus must have passed that bus stop at 6.30 PM. The next bus does not arrive until 7.30 AM the next day.

?This finger print, which is a smear, goes along the timetable from Monday morning horizontally across to Thursday. You can?t see that part of the trail in this photograph, a later photograph should hopefully show the horizontal Monday to Thursday smear, but in this photograph you can only really see the downwards stroke as the finger goes to see when the last bus was due on Thursday night. Last night. The finger stops at six thirty PM and we have a print. There is another small smudge here up by Friday morning where the finger has gone to check to see when the next bus is due and the finger sees that it is 7.30 AM the next day. We can therefore assume that the owner of the finger was seeing when the buses were due and found that there was not one due until early this morning.?

?All the same, the owner of that finger might have been waiting for a bus.? Hudson said.

?As you will recall,? said Fisher, ?when I asked the driver how regularly he had to stop at that particular shelter to pick up commuters, he replied ?almost never.? and the fingerprint is fresh enough to still be oily. It?s the killer?s fingerprint.?

Hudson found himself agreeing.

?I?d like to have the information from Ulsa because they may be able to tell us more about the time of the dumping by telling us about the traffic accident which wound up destroying the power line. When power goes down, people notice. Someone will have a very good idea of exactly when the accident occurred.?

Fisher grabbed the mouse and flipped forwards to photograph 40 and Hudson could clearly see a vertical smear, the trail of a finger. An oily smudge, left frantically and thoughtlessly. Fisher almost spoke when Caitlin came into the room.

?Dr. Farris asks if you?d like to see a dead body.? she said.

Not exactly what Hudson had wanted to hear.

?Do you want to see the body?? Fisher asked Hudson. It was the question Hudson had avoided answering for too long.

?Let?s go.? he said.

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